


Golden World

by orphan_account



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: A lot of action, Action/Adventure, Initially no burn actually, M/M, Original Criminal Organization, Romance (eventually), Slow Burn, a bit of french
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 43,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: All at once, the memories come flooding back, and Benji is helpless to do anything but let the torrent rip him apart. The mission. The shot. The shout. And the desperate escape. It occurs to him just as the alarm on his computer goes off that he is in danger.------------------------A mission gone terribly wrong leaves Benji stranded in a town swarming with enemy operatives. His only hope of rescuing his team lies in an enigmatic woman with a connection to the very criminal organization he's working to dismantle.
Relationships: Benji Dunn & Original Female Character, Benji Dunn/Ethan Hunt
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	1. Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if this is a conventional style, but for this fic in particular, I wrote over 30k words before even considering posting it on AO3. Because of that, I've posted several chapters and over 40,000 words at once. In retrospect, that might have not been a great idea, but I began this story for my own enjoyment and understand that, in any case, it doesn't contain many of the hallmarks of a well-received fic.  
> A few general points:  
> 1\. The beginning is a bit rough as I wrote it while I was greatly sleep-deprived, but I assure you it does get better.  
> 2\. There's about 30k words of action before Ethan shows up, which wasn't initially my intention but happened anyway because I like writing action perhaps a little too much.  
> 3\. The Benji/Ethan eventually becomes a prominent feature of the story, but it is still nevertheless focused primarily on the story and action, though I try to give more opportunities later on for the characters to talk in a setting where they aren't fighting for their lives.  
> 4\. There may be some continuity issues as I wrote this story in many, many sittings. Feel free to point any out if you see them.  
> 5\. The original female character, Central, isn't planned to be romantically involved with anyone, as I feel it would subtract from the Benji/Ethan focus. She is, however, undoubtedly one of the main characters.  
> 6\. This is going to be a very long fic, by my estimate at least 60k words.

Warmth. Well, he supposes he's feeling two kinds of warmth (one from the blanket, one from, well), but the one he's most focused on is the heat emanating from the arms wrapped around him, pressing him against a body of equal warmth. He has the sudden urge to nuzzle closer, perhaps press his head against a mess of black hair, and say "good morning". He turns giddily, prepared to kiss the person beside him, and then all he feels is emptiness and cold as he abruptly realizes there is no one.

All at once, the memories come flooding back, and Benji is helpless to do anything but let the torrent rip him apart. The mission. The shot. The shout. And the desperate escape. It occurs to him just as the alarm on his computer goes off that he is in danger and has no time to indulge in pointless, delusional fantasies when there are scary, dangerous terrorists after him and the very important thing he carries. He scrambles to the computer, still in his torn suit from the night before, and sees two men in ski masks and assault rifles walking briskly through the motel hallway in the direction of his room.

Benji is a field agent and has been one for several years now. He has assisted in certainly impossible missions, escaped death's grasp several times, and met with the most dangerous and influential people on the planet. He is still struck with a sudden panic when he sees the two people, however, heading straight for him. He hastily packs up his laptop and throws everything in a thin, sleek black bag, taking only a moment to change out his suit and button-up with a sweatshirt he had lying around on the floor.

With one last mournful glance at the bed, he slides out of the window opposite the door and onto a concrete landing, thankful he had had the foresight to request a room on the first floor. As his feet hit the ground, he hears a cry in French to his left, and he barely stifles a curse as he realizes the two men in the corridor had merely been a means to flush him out of his room. He surveys his surroundings for an instant, noting the heavily armed men on both his right and left. His sprint into the parking lot is accompanied by the rattle of gunfire.

"Chassez-le!" roars out one of the men. Benji hastily pulls out an automatic car override capsule (handy little thing, and something he certainly hadn't thought possible before he had joined the IMF and everything impossible was also suddenly necessary and essential to accomplish) and takes cover behind a jeep as his hand darts out and attaches the device to the red Prius beside him.

Bullets land around him in every which way, shattering the window behind him and riddling the asphalt with indents and holes. Benji ducks and covers his head as the capsule beeps twice, emits a faint green light, and automatically detaches. Benji lunges forth and catches it with one hand while his other swings the car door open. As he throws himself into the driver's seat, the windshield fractures as several bullet holes pass through and land in the upholstery of the backseats. The sound of approaching footsteps, as constant as the sound of rifles and machine guns firing at him, nearly sends Benji into his panic as he slams his thumb into the start button hard enough to bruise.

"Come on, come on," he mutters under his breath. The car starts with a slight hiccup and a loud grumble from the engine, and he quickly presses down on the accelerator pedal just as a man reaches him and grabs for his pistol.

His departure from the lot is accompanied by three things: one, many gunshots, two, even more French curses, and three, quiet declarations of victory from Benji as he cautiously keeps his head down and tries to steer the car out of the parking lot with his very limited view.

He finally allows himself to relax ever so slightly once the motel is out of sight and he's made sure no vehicles are following him. His grip on the steering wheel slackens, then tightens once more as he realizes that his successful escape is not, in any way, shape, or form, a solution. In fact, it's more of a necessity of sorts, for his current position and situation, as if the least he could do as the only free and available IMF agent in this part of the world (as far as he knows) is escape from a gang of well-equipped goons unharmed. Like the surviving the maelstrom of bullets and French insults (he always thought they had a unique knack for verbal assault) was the easy part, and now he has to figure out and execute the hard part of freeing his team and completing the mission they had spectacularly, though very understandably, failed before.

"Look at that, Benji," he says to himself with a wavering, unsure voice, which doesn't help much at all. "You did that. You're a field agent of the IMF. You can do this." For whatever reason, his self-assurances do little to ameliorate his crippling anxiety.

"You can do this," he repeats stubbornly, at this point wondering if all his emotions can do is make him miserable and incompetent.

"You can do this," he says a third time. He still doesn't believe it.

He realizes belatedly that he has no idea where he's driving to. He knows the most obvious course of action is to try to rescue his friends, only he has no idea how to accomplish that, nevermind how to survive it. For all his years of experience, Benji has never been very physically fit. He barely passed the combat section of the field test, and even then he's pretty sure the agent he had faced had been going easy on him.

He always had someone there (namely, Ethan, and really no one else) willing to do the daring stunts, willing to engage five men at once and possessing enough prowess to come out victorious, while Benji stayed behind, watching through the computer or simply standing back and witnessing the carnage wide-eyed. And though he's certainly gotten better with guns, he's still, admittedly, not brilliant in shoot-outs. He personally thinks it's reasonable to get anxious and panicked when one is being shot at and is at risk, at any time, of being brutally murdered, but when he's surrounded by weirdos and stoics who seem to relish the exhilaration that can only come from near-death experiences, he supposes he must seem like the odd one out.

The point is, he's sure any rescue attempt will contain much violence and fighting, which, coincidentally, are the two aspects of field work Benji is worst at. He supposes his two options (three, if running away and abandoning his comrades were an option, which it obviously isn't) are to barrel in suicidally quite like how Ethan is prone to doing and hope he's lucky that day, or to enlist help and prepare as much as possible while praying that the things they're doing to his team to extract information aren't overly painful (who is Benji kidding, though, of course they're painful).

Option two is the clear winner, only Benji has no resources and no people he could ask for help. He parks momentarily to survey his tools: the automatic car override capsule, a lock-picking device, a laptop containing the very sensitive data he's to protect at all costs, a phone, and, he supposes, the car itself.

"Perhaps I can drive straight through the walls to them and bonk the guards on the head with laptop," Benji speculates nervously, giving an abrupt and forced chuckle at the thought.

A car pulls up at a rather reasonable speed beside Benji, and, despite the fact he has no reason to suspect it, he still jumps and hurriedly makes as if to back out, until he sees the Uzi the driver is sporting and ducks down as the bullets begin firing, fracturing the window, windshield, steering wheel, driver's seat, and pretty much everything else within two feet of Benji.

As busy as he is cowering and trying to contrive a way to get out of this mess, he doesn't notice the momentary lapse in the gunfire as the door opens and an arm roughly pulls him out of the much abused Prius.

"Homme idiot," the man sneers as he precipitates Benji onto the asphalt. He points the gun at Benji with steady hands, his eyes absent of even a trace of regret or compassion, and Benji dazedly tries to get up even as he wonders if this is truly how he'll die, in the middle of some unknown town, shot to death by a henchman and unable to so much as save his friends.

The man's finger squeezes at the trigger. Benji can almost hear the gunshot already, the one that will end his life.

It comes a second later. Benji has squeezed his eyes shut, and it takes him a moment to realize that, besides the fact that Uzis don't sound like that, he is still alive. The Uzi lies gleaming and unused in the man's hand, the man in question himself having collapsed to the ground, his head tilted to expose a hole in the side of his head.

"W-w-what just happened?" Benji manages to stutter out as he scrambles back up, looking around in panic and a small measure of hope.

"Behind you," a voice says. Benji jumps up, pivots around, and lets out a very unmanly squeal almost all at the same time.

"You," the woman says, raising an eyebrow. "You're the IMF agent. Really."

"I-IMF?" Benji asks, confused and disappointed. "How do you know about the IMF?"

"How do you know about the IMF?" the woman returns.

"W-well, I work for them."

"Oh, I know, or I thought I knew, but it is difficult to believe considering what just happened."

Benji, despite knowing nothing of this woman, feels an instinctual need to defend himself.

"I didn't have a gun, alright," he snaps testily. "Or any kind of weapon, actually."

And then the woman does something completely inappropriate, in complete violation of everything Benji has ever learned at the IMF, in complete violation of everything Benji knows about surviving in this exciting and very fatal world of espionage and counter-terrorism: she hands her gun to him.

Benji stares at it, unblinking and shocked, for several seconds, before looking back up at the woman, who seems suddenly embarrassed.

"What?" she says. "You need a gun more than I do."

"But you don't know me," Benji replies. "Actually, er, who are you? We haven't met, have we?"

The woman gives Benji another appraising look, then shakes her head. "No, I don't believe so." She pauses. "Look, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that I'm very invested in the take-down of Pomme D'Or, and I understand the IMF is as well."

"I mean, yes, we are, but I don't see how the two of us could take them down by ourselves," Benji says reasonably, trying to mask his sudden hope that this woman will help him save his friends, his weariness toppled by a need to believe and trust, especially in this woman who just handed her gun over as if it were the natural thing to do.

"I get it," the woman says, rolling her eyes slightly as if Benji had already pleaded with her to help save his friends (as he'd been planning to, though he was certainly glad he didn't have to). "I don't doubt we'll need more people to take down Pomme D'Or or just get them off our backs. We just need to find out where your friends are being held."

"What?" Benji utters, bemused. "You're just going to help me, just like that?"

"I was already planning on rescuing them," the woman says, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Now, I just have a little more help."

She tilts her head toward a sleek black car, and Benji follows her entirely unsure if a person as seemingly altruistic and naive as her could truly exist in this business. It certainly doesn't seem possible, but as Benji slides into the passenger seat and places the gun in his lap, he decides that, regardless of whatever ulterior motives she may have, she is the best and only help he currently has.

"Right," he says eagerly as she starts the car and pulls out of the lot. "So, you have a base of operations or anything? Uh, swarming with agents, preferably, all very loyal and trustworthy, with state-of-the-art tech and gadgetry and all that?"

The woman turns for a second to give him a look that is both disconcerting and inscrutable at the same time. "Perhaps you should tell me your name first."

Benji coughs. "Right, right. My name is Benji, Benji Dunn, er, agent of the IMF."

"I know that."

"Yes, you do," Benji says quickly. "So, well, who are you?"

The woman makes a right turn at a crowded intersection, her hand rotating with the steering wheel as she says, "Call me... Central."

"Central? That- that's not your real name, is it?" Benji asks bemusedly.

"No, it's not. I've just always wanted to be called Central." She shows no signs of shame as she admits this.

"Ah," Benji says, nodding his head in understanding. "Yes, I get it. 'Central.' Very cool name."

Central is silent.

"Y'know," Benji says impulsively, "I've always wanted a cool code name like that. You'd think a big, top-secret organization like the IMF would use code names, but no, of course not. Even when I became a field agent, I was still good old Benji. It's a bit of a liability, isn't it, calling our agents by their real names?"

"Probably," Central replies, suddenly seeming very thoughtful and ruminative. "Would you like a code name, then? I could give you one, if you like."

"Would you?" Benji says, mostly failing in his attempt to appear unexcited at the prospect. "Well, you obviously don't know me very well, but-"

"You said you were good with tech, right? What about... Technician?"

"Hm," Benji replies noncommittally.

"IT Guy?"

"Sorry."

"Brainiac."

"Maybe."

"Wizard."

"Er-"

"Techgod."

"Why don't we just stick with Benji for now?" he manages to say before Central suggests another name. "Benji's good. Besides, there are loads of people called Benji. And they'll see my face anyhow, right, so it won't really matter."

Central sighs and halts the car at a red light, turning to outstretch a hand toward Benji. "Good to meet you, then, Benji."

"Yes," Benji says, giving what he hopes seems like a very firm handshake. "Nice to meet you as well, er, Central."

Central turns back and accelerates as the light turns green.

"So, now that we have introductions out of the way, could you tell me where we're going?" Benji asks politely.

"My hotel room."

"Your hotel room," Benji repeats, suddenly unsure of his decision to enter this woman's car. "Your hotel room doesn't happen to be full of supplies and loyal agents, does it?"

Central seems simultaneously annoyed and anxious at the thought that she might be under-prepared for the task at hand. Her brow furrows as her hands visibly tighten on the steering wheel.

"It's got a sniper rifle and my laptop, alright?" she snaps. "I don't know where you got the idea I was- this massively funded super spy or something."

"You're not?" Benji half-asks, half-states, crestfallen and slightly surprised.

"Not what?"

"A super spy. Well, a spy of any sort, really. Don't you work for a government? A really powerful, helpful, altruistic government, perhaps?"

"I have a black belt in Judo and good aim. Isn't that, well, everything you need to be a good spy?" she asks.

"Fuck me," Benji utters before he can stop himself. "You're just a civilian? No, no formal training in espionage and tactics? Just a delusion and a death wish, then, is that what this is?"

"I saved you, didn't I?" Central retorts. "And I think anyone who works for a secret spy agency is probably delusional and suicidal anyhow."

Benji opens his mouth to protest, then thinks of his colleagues and the enemy spies he's encountered, and promptly shuts it.

The car comes to a stop in front of a small, dingy hotel with several lights that blink on and off eerily as they make their way to the stairs.

"Lovely place," Benji says, mostly sarcastically, though part of him is glad to no longer be out in the open.

"I'm more than happy to move if you've got the cash," Central counters.

"Nope, no cash," Benji announces sadly. "Just my laptop and all the important data it's holding. Er-" He wonders if, perhaps, he shouldn't have said that, but Central seems to pay no heed to his statement and only inserts her key card into the door's electronic lock.

"Mi casa es su casa," she mutters drearily as she locks the door behind them and moves to flop onto the queen size bed. "Of course, neither one of us want to be in this particular, uh, 'casa,' but it's the best we've got."

"Yes, I suppose it is," Benji responds absently, his eyes scanning the room, noting the mold growing in one corner, the strange black ooze that leaks from a crack in the southern wall, and the abnormally high concentration of flies that swarm around the dirty chandelier hanging in the middle of the room. He looks around for a few more seconds, then asks, "is there a bathroom?"

"Communal," Central answers. "Down the hallway - it's got this big red X over it that's probably not blood. You really can't miss it."

Benji grimaces, quickly thanks her, and reluctantly leaves the room. He pauses at the door with the large red X over it and quickly decides that it probably isn't blood, not allowing himself enough time to truly examine the mark.

The bathroom itself is utterly and, at this point, predictably filthy, with flies waiting at every stall and toilet and strange yellow and brown substances dotting the floor and walls.

Benji makes the smart choice and ignores the toilets, heading straight for the row of sinks. The water, at the very least, seems clean enough, and so Benji splashes a handful onto his face.

He takes a moment to evaluate his situation and prospects. He takes the next few moments to mourn his lack of prospects and wonder how people go about writing wills.

The door opens and shuts behind him, but Benji, exhausted and depressed as he is, pays it very little mind, until a sudden pain in the back of his head ripples through him and sends him crashing onto the tiled floor. As he fades quickly into unconsciousness, his only thought is of Ethan, struggling valiantly as he is dragged away by two burly men, yelling at Benji to survive.

He certainly is making a mess of it, that's for sure.


	2. Chases and Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aren't chapter summaries sort of like spoilers? You can only be so vague for a single chapter. In any case, in this chapter, things start to really move. 
> 
> I do like to attach names to very temporary antagonists (e.g. Kevin the gunman in this chapter), as I feel more comfortable referring to someone as "Kevin" than, say, "the angry man." I'd say it's important for clarity to pay attention to these names, at least for the duration of time they're present in the story. As the story is from Benji's perspective, these names are first mentioned by either the character him/herself or by another person before they are referred to by that name in narration.
> 
> Some may think Benji and Central's relationship builds a little too quickly, and that Benji is uncharacteristically quick to trust her, but my justification is that she's already saved his life twice (by the end of this chapter) and done nothing particularly suspicious besides being very under-prepared.

He awakes groggily and slowly, the opening of his eyelids alike to the lifting of a several ton truck that really would like to stay put.

He is in a car moving rather quickly, lying in the backseat with rope binding his feet and arms. Resisting the urge to utter some curse and ask his captors where he is, as he feels people in his position are wont to do, he looks around, his eyes darting in every direction to take in the driver and the man sitting beside him with an AK-47 resting comfortably in his lap, the cool grey shades of the car's interior, and, just barely, the highway the car is proceeding down.

The man in the passenger's seat looks back with a look of sheer panic on his face, and Benji freezes and wonders if it isn't too late for him to close his eyes and pretend to be unconscious until he realizes the man isn't looking at him at all.

"Shit, Kevin," the man says, "she's still on us. Who the hell is this chick?"

Benji, having concluded subtlety really isn't his forte, manages to prop himself against the seat and look through the rear window with the man. There is Central, with her long brown hair billowing behind her, driving in a car with a mostly ruined windshield and two dead bodies lying in the back. She twists and turns through the traffic, navigating with an admirable level of skill and calm as she slowly makes her way up to their car.

"Just shoot at her already!" the driver - Kevin, apparently - hollers desperately as he swerves to avoid another car. "You don't have to kill her, just distract her enough to get her to crash!"

"Get down!" the other man shouts at Benji as he readies his gun towards the rear of the car. Benji practically precipitates himself into the narrow space between the back seats and the back of the front seats as the man begins firing with wild abandon.

At this point, it occurs to him that, perhaps, he should make an effort himself to escape, and he begins fiddling with the rope tightly binding his hands together. He instinctually winces at the intermittent light of muzzle flare above him.

"She's getting closer!" the man yells at Kevin. "None of my shots are connecting!"

"Then stop being a crap gunman for once and GET HER!" Kevin bellows angrily.

The other man turns swiftly towards Kevin and points his rifle at him, and Benji is almost anticipating a rage-driven betrayal until he shouts, "get down!", only shooting once the driver has put his head down below the height of the driver's window.

"I can't drive like this!" Kevin shouts. "Could you at least tell me where to steer!?"

The man's aim becomes even more erratic (if that were possible) as he quickly glances toward the front.

"Right, right!" he screams hoarsely, his rifle still firing. "Turn right!"

"How much right!?" the driver yells back. "Like, a little right, or 45 degrees right-"

A gunshot from a more distant source echoes out, and suddenly, with a feeling of momentary relief, Benji listens as one of the tires quickly deflates. The car slows down to a crawl as the driver defiantly pops his head back up and gives his friend a look of pure despair.

"We're screwed," Kevin groans. "We are so freaking screwed, man."

"No, we're not!" the man protests angrily. "It's not over until-" He abruptly stops, his head tilting back from the force of a bullet.

"Justin!" the driver shouts. "Justin, what just-"

A hand shoots through the driver's side window, shattering the remnants of glass still there, and pulls Kevin through it. Benji struggles against his bonds as he listens to the slight gurgles and movements of a person being strangled to death. A few seconds later, the door opens, allowing a bright block of sunlight to pass onto Benji's head and squinting eyes.

"You alright?" Central asks, crouching down with a knife and speedily removing Benji's bonds. "They didn't hurt you, did they?"

Benji stands up on wobbly legs, one hand raised up to shield his eyes from the sun. He replies, "no, no, I don't think so." Then, he looks back at the car and realizes something.

"Er," he begins hesitantly, dreading the answer. "You didn't happen to see a laptop, by chance, during this whole chase, did you? My laptop, specifically."

Central doesn't respond, instead stepping away to open the trunk with one hand.

"Not in here," she says. "And it wasn't in the other car. And, uh, if it was in the other three cars, well-" she chuckles. "-Then it's definitely lost."

Despite this statement, she still leans in and extracts something - a stack of papers - from the trunk.

"What is it?" Benji asks, peering over Central's shoulder and praying (to whom, he doesn't know) that whatever she's found contains the location of both his laptop and his team.

"Plans," she mutters absently. Benji squints and begins reading the first page. He's just reached the disclaimer/blatant threat until the squeal of tires behind them snaps him out of his daze.

"Search the car," she orders, eyeing the other car suspiciously as it veers around them. "We should probably get out of here before the police show up."

"Right, right," Benji mutters, opening the passenger side door and allowing the man's dead body to fall out along with his rifle. As he stares at the gun, he absently pats his own waist, then realizes with horrid certainty that they've taken both his laptop and his gun. He suddenly feels a very strong urge to cry - after all of the trouble they had gone through, after the sacrifice his team had made to ensure Benji made it away with the data, he had gone and lost it because he'd been busy washing his face, and now he had lost the gun Central had given him, a symbol of their impromptu alliance.

"I-I don't have the gun, er, it turns out," Benji stutters out while Central scans the other side of the car. "The gun you gave me, I mean," he clarifies nervously.

"Of course you don't," Central replies casually, her hand reaching out to snatch something off the driver's body. "They're not so stupid as to leave you with a firearm. Just grab the rifle, it's fine."

Benji reluctantly bends down to pick up the slightly bloodied rifle, halting only when he notices a phone peeking out of the pocket of the dead man.

"Found a phone," Benji reports. Another car whizzes past them.

"Shit," Central curses.

"Sorry?"

"Not-not that, the phone or whatever. This." She brandishes the papers. "They're details about Pomme D'Or's operation here. I'm guessing these two were hired mercenaries."

Benji slips the phone into his pocket and halfheartedly asks, "and what does it say about their operation?"

Central gives a half-smirk that quickly morphs into a deep frown. For a moment, they stand there, under the unfairly intense rays of the sun, in the middle of some highway, two unprepared people with no plan, no arsenal, and no funds, and Benji can feel the horror and bile rising up as one inside of him even before Central says, "they're planning on executing your team. Tonight."

"A-all of them?" Benji stammers helplessly. His stomach is suddenly a heavy weight inside of him, dragging him downwards.

Central gives the document a cursory glance. "Not a guy named Ethan," she clarifies shortly. "Everyone else, though - uh, Jane Carter, Luther Stickell, William Brandt. Yeah, it's pretty explicit. It actually says-" she raises the documents to the same height as her eyes and clearly enunciates, "The following three agents will be summarily executed on June 9 at 23:00. The execution will be held in the basement of the building located at 3246 Goodwill Road and will be carried out via lethal injection. Dose will be exactly measured to ensure..." she trails off uncertainly.

"What is it?" Benji asks dejectedly.

Central clears her throat, and then, though clearly uncomfortable, pronounces, "to ensure maximum pain and suffering. Wow. I'm not making this stuff up. It actually says that."

Benji feels a guilty relief at the thought that Ethan, at least, will be spared, but it is quickly followed by the manic realization that, in any case, they'll have to break them out much quicker than either of them had anticipated if they want more than just a sole survivor to bring back. The thought of simply abandoning his friends to their fates because Benji wasn't prepared enough makes him viscerally sick and disgusted, and perhaps Central feels something similar, because, after a quick scowl at the paper, she turns around and heads for the gun-riddled car in which she had been when Benji had awoken.

"Got everything?" she calls back. "We're going. We need to come up with a plan. Now."

"Right, right," he mutters anxiously as he fumbles with the assault rifle, holding it in one hand as he shoves the dead body back into the car and shuts the door with the other.

"So," Benji remarks as Central starts the car and turns it around. "Going back to the hotel?"

Central snorts in response. "I wish. They ambushed me there - the minute it took me to take them out they used to whisk you away, and it took a good while for me to track you down afterward. Nothing in that room now but two dead bodies, smashed furniture, and probably some blood splatter.

Benji turns abruptly to face Central and scrutinizes her. "You're alright?" he asks cautiously. "No injuries or anything?"

"No, no, I'm fine," she declares. "The goons they sent were completely incompetent. No formal training whatsoever. One of them tried to throw a table at me. Can you believe that? What kind of idiot leaves himself open to attack so he can throw a table?"

Benji laughs tensely. "We can only hope they're all that way." He pauses, then adds, "but they're probably not. You don't get a massive criminal organization like Pomme D'Or by just gathering a bunch of airheads together." He recalls the incident that led to the capture of his entire time excluding only himself. "No," he says morosely. "They have skilled agents of their own. Quite a lot of them, actually. Probably stationed a few to guard my team."

Central releases a long, prolonged breath through her nostrils. The sound is very much like a balloon deflating.

"We'll figure it out once we get there," she finally declares.

"O-once we get there?" Benji asks tentatively. "We're going there? Now?"

Though Benji can't see her face, he can envision her rolling her eyes nonetheless. "Where else would we go? The sooner we get them out of there, the better." She takes one hand off the steering wheel to toss the papers to Benji.

"Take a look at those," she commands. "Tell me if you find anything important."

Benji adjusts his seat slightly and tries to get his mind to relax enough to make sense out of the assortment of letters in front of him. After several silent minutes of scanning through the documents and flipping through pages describing their budget and ideology (something about creating a golden paradise, though Benji really couldn't care less about whatever asinine and ridiculous abstractions they're using to justify their criminal acts), he decides to take a bit of a break and takes out the phone in his pocket - not his own, unfortunately, as he realizes they took that off him as well.

The lock screen isn't set to the standard design, and instead displays a 2D map of the area around them. The blue arrow that represents them travels in the opposite direction of the destination, leaving behind a thick blue line.

"They were using this phone as a GPS," Benji says excitedly. "To track down my laptop, all we have to do is follow this!"

Central glances at Benji. "Sorry, why is that?"

"Well," Benji replies, suddenly feeling a vague and unfamiliar sense of pride stir deep within him. "I don't mean to brag, well, yes, sort of, I mean to brag, but I installed state-of-the-art encryption algorithms and security measures in my laptop. To unlock it, they won't just need a password - they'll also need to pass a fingerprint scan, a retinal scan, and an auditory scan with a pass phrase that very precisely detects the modulations in a person's voice and determines whether they're me or not. I, er, got some inspiration from the British. In other words, they need me to unlock that laptop and get to the data, which means they must have been bringing me to wherever they've brought the laptop."

Central seems only slightly reassured by this statement. Her grip on the steering wheel loosens a near-invisible amount

Benji tries again, saying, "look at that, we've got a plan now. Sort of. We just have to get my friends out, retrieve the laptop, and then do all of the other things that need to be done to utterly and completely dismantle a large, powerful, influential criminal syndicate composed of an innumerable amount of operatives and hired guns, probably with connections in every government and prominent political organization the world over. I-I mean, how hard could that be?"

Central suddenly laughs, and it isn't a forced, nervous laugh, nor is it derisive or sarcastic. It is a genuine sound of amusement, and Benji feels pleased with himself for once.

"What was that?" she asks. "Was that, was that an attempt to cheer me up?"

Benji feels the beginnings of a blush heat up his cheeks. "No," he replies petulantly, "it was just me saying what we have to do. Someone has to."

Central smiles at Benji, an authentic, gentle curve of the lips that has Benji wondering why she doesn't do it more often. "Thank you," she says softly. "Honestly, thank you, Benji."

"You're welcome," Benji says, grinning back at her.

She looks back to the road, casually swerving around a car, exceeding the speed limit as she is by at least 30 mph. Her smile slowly fades, but the atmosphere in the car, despite the two dead bodies in the back, despite the impending execution and lack of resources, feels ever so slightly lighter.

"The part about the execution mentions an address," Central says after another few minutes of silence. "If I recall correctly, there's a surprisingly well-funded library around there with a fully stocked computer lab, and I'm guessing it's probably pretty empty around this time."

"Oh," Benji says shortly. "That's convenient."

Central looks at Benji as if he were completely missing the main point.

"I want you to be in there," she says slowly when Benji makes no attempt to say anything else. "Supporting me while I infiltrate the building."

"Assuming there's anything to hack into," she adds quickly.

Benji feels obligated to defend his pride as an IMF agent and fully grown man. "I'm not completely incompetent," Benji says peevishly. "You don't need to try to subtly relegate me to tech support. I get it. I'll be a burden."

Central laughs and shakes her head. "That's really not it, Benji. Granted, I have no idea how good you really are in the field, but you're part of the IMF and part of the task force they sent to deal with Pomme D'Or, which means you must be pretty skilled. If it turns out that it's a closed system, or that the computer lab is closed or something to that effect, then I'll happily bring you with me. Believe me, Benji, I really don't have the luxury of underestimating you or demoting you to some lesser role. For this to work, we both need to operate to the maximum of our capacity. I just thought you might be able to do more from a computer than in the field."

Benji stares at Central for a moment, before finally saying, "right. Well, that's reasonable."

She then quirks her mouth, and hesitantly says, "on second thought, I should probably take you with me. I'm terrible with technology. You ever robbed an electronics store before?"

"What?" Benji asks, completely confounded now. "How does anything you were saying before having anything to do with robbing an electronics store? Did I miss something?"

"Well, neither of us have cash, and I thought it might be good if you could carry a laptop around with you during the infiltration so you can do all the hacking and still help me manually as well," Central explains as if her reasoning were obvious.

"You... you want me in the field, then? I thought I was staying in the computer lab."

"I'm not an agent, alright," she says snappishly. "I was hasty and made the wrong decision. I realize now it's not a good idea to deprive myself of physical backup, especially considering the AK-47 you have now. Just- just come with me. Besides, your friends will be much more likely to cooperate and trust me if you're there with me."

Benji feels an odd mixture of excitement, happiness, and anxiety at the thought of being in the field with Central. She's proven herself to be nothing if not reliable and trustworthy, but after so many years of being an IMF agent, it is difficult not to suspect everyone he meets to some degree. And yet it seems that she trusts him, likely more than she should, and Benji figures the least he can do is reciprocate that and stop wondering when Central's going to turn around and shoot him in the back of the head.

"So, we're going to rob a store, then? Should we get ski masks? We have guns, perhaps we should just do the whole shebang-"

"Woah, Benji," Central interrupts. "You're a little too eager to rob a store, aren't you?"

Benji scowls at her. "It's not as if I haven't done things many times more illegal than just- just robbing a little store in some small town."

Central holds up a hand reconciliatorily. "Of course you have," she says with a hint of fondness. "But there's no need to get the entire store. We just need one laptop."

Benji reluctantly concedes. "And how are we going to get just one laptop?"

Central shrugs. "You're the big, bad IMF agent. Don't you have any ideas?"

Benji stays silent and sullen.

"We'll... we'll think about something on the way there," Central finally declares with some confidence.

And they continue driving to the sleepy little town in which their deaths are almost assured.

Larry Pippins is probably one of the only people who likes his job in this small, decaying town that refuses to acknowledge the concept of either cold or snow. He understands there are some who seek adventure and exploration, who aren't content to simply work until retirement and then die from old age, who want to change the world and be "somebody."

Larry is not one of those people. He likes helping people choose the right TV or radio, or chatting with regular customers who, he likes to think, only come back for the atmosphere and company (and also the air conditioning). He can spend hours content standing at the register, gazing up at the TV he so smartly installed opposite the counter.

More importantly, he can appreciate the calm, boring nature of the town in which he lives. There was perhaps one murder last year, and it had been performed by a stray cougar on the town drunk, who likely had been too inebriated to recognize that trying to pat cougars isn't a very healthy thing to do. The most exciting thing that usually happens is the Christmas Festival, when people chip in to buy artificial snow and watch the children play around and build snowmen for a couple of hours. And, best of all, there had yet to be a single robbery in the history of the town.

Until now.

"Down on the ground, now!" the woman in the ski mask screams angrily. "I see a single person not on the ground, you're all being riddled with bullets, you hear me!?"

Larry ducks down and searches frantically for the panic button that he had installed a few years ago (not because he ever thought it would be necessary, but simply because he thought every store should have one), but as his fingers wander along the length of the corner, hoping to coincidentally make contact with the button, the woman leans over the counter and proceeds to roughly flip him over it.

"Like I'd let you," the woman says scornfully. "Just stay there on the ground like a good little... citizen."

Larry isn't a fool. His store is one of the most successful in the town, and he reasons so long as she doesn't raze it to ashes, it can recover. So he obediently lays down and holds out his hands in a show of surrender.

"Anyone else feel like testing their luck?" the woman shouts. "I assure you, I'm more than capable of killing you all long before the police get here."

Larry trembles on the carpet floor, but his curiosity gets the better of his fear, and he hesitantly raises his head in time to see the woman step over to the register and open it.

In the periphery of his vision, he sees something - a flash of black and blue. His heart leaps at the thought that someone has escaped and is calling the cops.

Strangely, only a few seconds later, the woman steps out with only a few bills in her hand, waves her hand dismissively, and proceeds to walk out of the store as if she were a normal customer.

Larry, like the rest of the people there, sticks to the ground for a minute longer to be safe, but when the woman doesn't reappear, he unsteadily makes his way back up and, very belatedly, pushes the panic button.

"Hey," he yells to the frightened, huddled mass of customers. "I called the police, but you all should probably leave."

Larry feels slightly insulted by how quickly they vacate the building. Have they no respect or concern for the state of his store? Where will they get their precious TVs and phones if his store goes bankrupt (he hadn't gotten property insurance for the store, mostly because he hadn't thought it necessary, but also because there wasn't a single insurance company in town or in any neighboring towns)?

But then Larry actually looks around and inspects the store, and not a single product is damaged. Excluding the lack of customers, the store seems exactly as it did before the robbery, and as Larry goes to the counter and counts the money inside, he realizes the woman stole, perhaps, a maximum of 200 dollars. It wasn't abnormal for Larry to make more than that off of a single sale.

He almost regrets calling the police now. He supposes he'll have to fill out a report now, or try to give a description of- well, not her face, that was covered, but her hair, perhaps. Not that he won't try his very best telling them about her hair, but it all just sounds like a very big bother.

As anxious and frustrated as he is, considering hair and reports and other such relevant factors in robberies, Larry doesn't notice the rather inconspicuous disappearance of one of his most expensive laptops. And he doesn't give another thought to the blur he saw in his peripheral vision.

"Did you see that?" Benji asks excitedly, laptop tucked under one arm, as Central tears the ski mask off and throws it onto the ground.

His smile suddenly fades. "D-did anyone else see that, actually? You don't think anyone saw me putting on the mask, did they?"

Central shrugs. "You're the one who hacked into the security cameras. You put it on in the blind spot, didn't you?"

Benji puffs up his chest a little. "Of course I did," he said, attempting to sound indignant and likely only coming off as uncertain. "But someone might have seen."

"No one saw," Central replies dismissively. "Probably," she adds. She gestures at her ski mask on the ground, and Benji quickly takes his out of the pocket of his sweatshirt and throws it on top.

Just after she's taken out the lighter and set both of the masks aflame, she takes another glance at Benji and frowns.

"We should probably switch out your clothes," she comments. "Your current ones have some unidentifiable but very conspicuous brown stains on them. Someone might be able to match you to the laptop thief."

"Right, right," Benji says, eyes downturned to examine said unidentifiable stains that he must have gotten from his fall in the hotel’s unspeakably filthy bathroom. "So, clothing store's next, then?"

Central sighs and glares at something on Benji's pants. Benji follows her gaze to the red stain that is almost certainly blood on the hem of his jeans and groans loudly.

"We'll have to buy you a new shirt and pants," Central says with a tone that implies she finds the idea extremely repugnant. "I only stole $160."

Benji understands immediately, his face twisting into a slight scowl directed at his own clothes.

"I could always turn them inside-out," Benji suggests reluctantly. "It'll look a little strange, but-"

"Too suspicious," Central interrupts. "We'll just have to get the cheapest clothes we can."

And so after the masks have completely burned up, they depart from the dim alleyway and make their way to the nearest clothing store.

"This shirt's only $4," Benji says as optimistically as possible, pointing at a drab grey shirt that's probably two sizes too small for him. Central has spent the last 5 minutes glowering at various articles of clothing, and it's making Benji feel almost guilty.

"Get it," she says not unkindly. She pulls a pair of sweatpants off its hanger and holds it out to Benji. "This one's $5. What do you think?"

Benji is well-versed in the art of baggy, unfashionable clothes, but only at home where he isn't expected to be professional and serious and all that. He imagines it's a sort of duty of his, as an IMF agent, to protect his integrity and pretend the last time he saw sweatpants was when he was 15, and so he, rather unconvincingly, sighs and takes it from her.

"If I have to," he says.

Once Benji has put on the new clothes, they exit the store, Central lights his old clothes on fire, and they spend the next 7 minutes waiting for them to burn up in another conveniently dark alleyway.

Benji checks the time on the phone he extracted from one of his dead captors - 9:30. Despite the fact that they still have 13 hours and 30 minutes until the execution, Benji can't help the spike of fear and same he feels as he realizes how much time they've wasted because he was careless enough to get kidnapped.

"We'll go to the place your friends are being held next," Central informs him as they simultaneously enter the car from opposite sides. "Do a little bit of recon."

Benji hastily goes through the automatic set-up process on the laptop while Central drives them through the small town.

"You have any ideas for a password?" Benji asks absently as Central drives through an intersection. At this point, having seen her rescue her life to save him, it seems natural to ask her questions like that, and besides, if she is to be believed (which Benji thinks she is), it isn't like she could do much harm with his laptop anyhow.

"'gunsandglory991!(@&'," she answers casually. Benji frowns at her, but dutifully enters her suggestion with the mental acknowledgement that its utter randomness makes it an ideal password.

"We're here," she calls just as Benji finishes the set-up. "I think."

"What do you mean, you thi-" he halts as he sees the building in front of which they've parked.

"You sure you read those papers right?" Benji asks, leaning over and snatching the pile from the backseat. "Because it could not possibly be here."

Central continues to stare, visibly horrified, as Benji glances back and forth between the papers and the building.

"No, it's here," Benji announces. "How could it be here? I mean, nevermind the fact it's the last place anyone would think of, how would they even get them over here? Did they just... y'know, drag the bodies past? Actually, are these places 24/7?"

"How would I know that?" Central snaps. "I swear, every time I think Pomme D'Or couldn't get more diabolical, they do something to sink even further."

She sighs and exits the car, slamming the car door behind her with excess force. Benji tentatively follows after her with his laptop in tow.

"We're going?" Benji nearly shouts. "We're actually going-"

"Do you want to save your friends or not?" Central says, though she seems genuinely embarrassed. "We have to do this, Benji."

Benji swallows audibly as Central pushes open the door and walks through into the dark space in front of them, seemingly lit up only by a couple of spotlights located around the room.

And, with one final reminder that he's doing it for a very good cause, the best cause, really, he follows Central into the strip club.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that, as you may have already observed, this story does not aim for realism or accuracy, nor will it make any attempts to give advanced technical explanations. I'd say that this generally fits with the style of Mission: Impossible, wherein advanced technology like computers disguised as magazines (I believe that's what it was, anyway) that can automatically run a sketch through facial recognition is utilized with barely a mention of how it works (or how Ethan got his hands on it in the first place, considering he was constantly on the run and the IMF had been disbanded at that point).


	3. Strippers and Fires

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Q: Why a strip club?  
> A: Why not a strip club.

Benji had been to a strip club once before, for a friend's stag night. It had been unpleasant, expensive, and Benji had spent the entire night trying to perfect an expression of modest interest without seeming too apathetic or lecherous. Every time the dancer had strutted her way over to him, he would give her a nervous grin and hastily throw a dollar bill at her, then check his watch and hopelessly wonder when they were leaving.

The experience this time around is marginally better, if only because Central does little to hide her expression of distaste and discomfort as they walk over to the booth in the darkest corner and sit down.

"I'm guessing they've got some secret entrance to the basement," Central says bleakly. She pauses, then adds, "you know, I don't think I see a single other female patron here. We're probably drawing a lot of attention." She looks over to Benji, who has already opened his laptop. The blue glare of the screen contrasts sharply with the neon pink and purple lights overhead.

"I'll be quick," Benji mutters, his fingers settling on the keyboard, his eyes darting around the screen. "Funny, that a strip club of all places has wifi. You think they monitor it closely? Oh, of course they don't, it's a strip club."

Central reluctantly extracts herself from her seat, moving as if the act were as painful as taking off a bandage. "I'll look around," she reports gloomily. Her face seems set in a permanent scowl.

"Try not to waste all the money," Benji calls with a clear trace of humor in his voice.

"Shut up," Central replies without any malice, then strides away purposefully.

Benji does his best to ignore the people around him, the garish lights that makes it seem as if his hair is bright purple, the blaring dubstep that seems to emanate from the walls themselves, and, most importantly, the scantily-clad women who slowly navigate in disturbingly creative ways around their podiums. His hands fly across the keyboard, typing in line after line into the command prompt, and for once in what feels like decades, Benji feels something alike to comfortable and calm.

"Hey, baby," a voice says from somewhere above him. "You know we do private shows, right?"

Benji's head snaps up like a spring, and he gawks at the near-naked woman in heavy makeup that has apparently decided he's the right kind of man to proposition.

"S-s-sorry?" Benji asks, his voice suddenly high-pitched and fearful.

The woman grins, her teeth gleaming and her overly red lips puffing out. "I'll be real good for you, I promise."

Benji momentarily glances at the floor and mentally pleads for it to swallow him up already. When it makes no move to do so, he swallows and responds, "No thank you. I, er, don't have any money, you see. You should find someone else."

The woman only leans in closer. "Don't be like that, babe. You don't like me?" She tilts her head slightly, and Benji swears her smirk seems slightly malicious now.

"No, of course I like you- I mean, what's not to like, right?" Benji gives a short, abrupt laugh. "Sorry, was that inappropriate? Am I allowed to say that?"

The woman, at this point, is nearly touching Benji, her bare arms moving to slide around his torso.

"Oh, you don't know how happy I am to hear that," she breathes into his ear, forcing a yelp out of Benji as she sticks out her tongue and licks his earlobe once. "Why don't we get out of here? There's so many things I want to do with you."

Benji scooches hastily to the other edge of the seat, but the woman holds onto him stubbornly, her slim legs gracefully sliding over the velvet seat in an impressive technique that seamlessly allows her to transition from standing to sitting.

"Don't be like that," the woman says, her breath a bit too humid for Benji's liking (not that there was a single part of the situation that was to Benji's liking). "Just let go and let me do the work."

Benji looks pointedly away and keeps his body stiff and unresponsive, desperately hoping the woman will go away. Instead, she only sighs and turns her head to the side.

It finally occurs to Benji that his laptop screen probably seems a bit conspicuous, what with the way it's displaying all of the security feeds in the strip club. The stripper's eyes widen just a tad, and Benji is about ready to shove her back before she can really see anything when a voice behind them - Central, thank God - says, "I'm not an expert, fortunately, on the matter, but I'm pretty sure strippers can't touch the patrons."

Benji breathes a sigh of relief as the woman averts her eyes from the screen and releases her grasp on him, turning around in one fluid motion to face Central. Her initial smirk, full of dirty promises and dirtier intentions, reappears, and she slinks off the seat and approaches Central with swaying hips.

"Oh, but it's just so hard to resist," the stripper purrs. "But I guess I'll make an exception with you." She proceeds to make good on her promise by circling Central alike to how he imagines a shark might circle its prey, her arms sticking firmly to her sides.

Central presses her lips together hard enough to whiten them. "No thanks," she finally says without a vestige of emotion. "Maybe later."

"You're both so stubborn," the stripper complains playfully. She sweeps her leg around Central, inches away from actually touching her, and then her eyes gleam mischievously as she peers down into the pocket of Central's coat. With an impressively subtle dip of her hand, she takes out a few bills and steps back, waving the money back and forth between two fingers with a smile.

"Come on," she whispers. "Let's have some fun."

Benji, who has thus far been watching the interaction with a mix of horror and fascination, suddenly leans forward and tries to say something as Central's expression crumbles into pure fury. Her eyes glint dangerously as she shoots her hand out and grips the stripper's other arm in an iron vice that stretches the fragile skin to a visibly painful extent. Benji's throat locks up as she leans forward and growls, "I'm not kidding. Give it back."

The stripper vainly tries to tug her hand out of Central's grasp, and her expression grows increasingly panicked and worried with each failed attempt.

"Let me go," the stripper says angrily. "You're hurting me."

Benji almost appreciates the deafening music at that moment, as it is likely the only thing that's preventing this confrontation between Central and a stripper from escalating to a permanent ban and a bouncer kicking them out.

"Give me the money, and I'll let go," Central replies rather reasonably. Nevertheless, the stripper doesn't move her other arm, which is outstretched defiantly in the opposite direction of Central.

"As if!" the stripper yells. "Do you know how much rent is around here? It's insane! It's probably criminal! So stop being a stingy little jerk and let go of me!"

The dubstep isn't enough to obscure the stripper's shouts this time, and at the same time that several customers turn their heads to curiously view the two women, a bouncer at the front door eagerly leaps down the stairs and towards them.

Central, perhaps seeing the bouncer as well, apparently gives up on intimidation and easily flips the stripper over her shoulder. The money flutters around in the air as the stripper whimpers in pain.

Central quickly snatches up the money in the air just before the bouncer, at this point sprinting, reaches them. His shoulder rush is easily sidestepped, and as he passes Central, she grabs his bulky arm and flings him over her shoulder and and into the wall. The room shakes with a heavy thud.

The crowd that has been steadily growing around them backs away as one, and then disperses completely as Central looks up and glares at them. Through the chaotic panic, Benji can just sight another security guard approaching them, and he finally stands up and approaches Central, his laptop folded and stored in the crease of his elbow.

"We should probably go," Benji suggests. "I saw a guard coming, and this one has a gun, I think."

Central sighs and looks at him apologetically. "I'm sorry about this. I lost my temper, and I wasn't thinking, and now we're probably banned from this club. What a mess, huh?"

"Oh, I don't know," Benji replies wryly. "Seeing you judo-flip a stripper was pretty entertaining."

Central cracks a grin and grabs Benji's hand, dragging him through the inconveniently large crowd in front of the entrance while the security guard shoves his way through the same group.

"Coming through, coming through!" the guard manages to shout over the booming dubstep. "Make way, make way!"

Central nearly pulls the door from its hinges as she rips it open and rushes outside with Benji. They stop for a moment, allowing their eyes to adjust to the sudden daylight, when the door is suddenly knocked back open and the security guard emerges.

"Miss, you better come with me," he growls with barely a facade of politeness.

Central slowly walks backward, her face a poor facsimile of obedience. "I'm alright," she says pleasantly. "I think I'll just be going now."

The guard twists to the side slightly and pulls out his pistol - a little too eagerly, in Benji's opinion. Central backs into their car and stills as the guard raises the gun and approaches Central.

"Just stay there," the guard barks. "Stay right there."

Benji swallows and begins creeping toward them in a slight crouch, his laptop now held in both hands as if he were wielding a bludgeon instead of a very expensive piece of technology. He takes a moment to peer down at the laptop with a mournful gaze, and then readies it above the guard.

Before he can do anything, however, Central grabs the guard's gun, slams her elbow into his cheek, and then propels him upward, over her shoulder and onto the roof of their car in one elegant maneuver. She then takes hold of him with both hands and drags him off. Benji lowers the laptop hesitantly, wondering if perhaps he shouldn't smack the guard once, at the very least, just to be safe.

Central gives him a look as she rolls the guard over to the wall of the strip club. "You weren't going to use that, were you?"

"He was pointing a gun at you!" Benji gestures at the groaning guard helplessly. "Should I have just let him shoot you?"

"He wasn't going to shoot me," Central replies dismissively. "Not any place it matters, anyhow."

"Oh, right," Benji says sarcastically as they get into the car. "So, your shoulder or something? Oh, no big deal, getting shot in the shoulder, nevermind the risk of infection and the hot metal burrowed in your body-"

"Benji," Central interrupts him. "We're fine."

She pivots the car around and quickly drives away before the guard can regain enough of his senses to shoot at them.

"Well, we will be fine," she adds.

"How will we be fine?" Benji asks, slightly hysterical now. It suddenly occurs to him that they have effectively lost their only way to save his team, and thus their only chance of surviving this whole ordeal. "There's no way either of us are getting back into the club, which means there's no way to get to the basement, which means my team is dead, Pomme D'Or will hunt both of us down at their leisure, I'll be shot once I unlock the laptop, under very heavy duress, mind you, you'll probably be shot before that, we'll all be dead, they'll take over the world unhindered, and all because you couldn't let a stripper have ten dollars!"

Central looks over at Benji bemusedly. She raises one eyebrow concisely, and then turns back before Benji can shout at her to keep her eyes on the road.

"I saw the hours," she says offhandedly. "They're open until 11."

"Great, so we can't sneak in after everyone's gone," Benji surmises.

"No," Central concedes. "But there's another way to get everyone out."

Benji laughs derisively. He's aware it isn't exactly Central's fault, but at this point, all he can think about is Ethan - Ethan in immense pain, Ethan screaming his lungs out as he watches his friends die in agony, Ethan wondering why the hell he sacrificed so much to let Benji escape when Benji couldn't even rescue his friends, Ethan burning with sudden rage and regret, Ethan staring up at him without a hint of the kindness and humor Benji is used to. It's enough to make Benji want to curl up and cry.

Instead, he scathingly says, "And what's that? What's your next genius, foolproof plan? Oh, do please tell me, great mastermind."

Central stiffens for a second, but then relaxes almost as immediately. "We set the place on fire," she says smoothly.

Benji's anger and desperation are quickly replaced with disbelief. "Sorry, could you repeat that?" Benji chuckles nervously. "Because I thought I heard you say-"

"Set it on fire," Central repeats simply. "So long as the fire's large enough, everyone should evacuate, and then we'll have the run of the room."

"And you don't think it's a bit reckless, setting fire to a building and all?"

Central shrugs. "We've already robbed a store - kind of. Might as well go all the way, right?" She pulls up in front of a gas station.

Benji groans loudly. "We're not here for gas, are we?" he asks halfheartedly.

Central grins at him enigmatically. "Yes, we are."

"To fill up the tank?" he inquires, unable to stop a tiny sliver of hope from infecting his voice.

"To fill up this," she says, holding up a plastic squeeze bottle. "Practically fiendish, isn't it?"

"That's one way to put it," Benji mutters sourly as Central exits the car and sticks the gas nozzle into the bottle. "Insane might be a little more fitting."

A barely conscious worker leaning against his fold-out chair perks up as Central gets out and approaches with hands behind his back, as if there were some need to be professional in some gas station in the middle of nowhere.

Benji absently looks back over to Central, who has just finished filling the bottle and apparently still hasn't noticed the employee approaching her. Realizing that it's a tad bit suspicious to be filling up a bottle with gasoline, Benji begins to pound against the glass and yells at Central, "incoming! Incoming!"

Central leans down and frowns at Benji, gasoline-filled bottle still clearly visible from the worker's view.

"Hello, ma'am," the employee greets politely, his voice slightly distorted by the glass of the passenger's side window. "Will you paying with card or-"

"Cash!" Benji shouts as he bursts out of the car and rushes to block the man's view of the bottle. "We'll be paying with cash."

The worker's expression barely changes in response to Benji's outburst. He leans over and quotes the staggeringly low price displayed on the LED screen of the gas pump, and Central hands the money to him with a terribly suppressed groan.

Once the employee has left them and walked into the store, Central turns to face Benji. "Thank you," she says, her face betraying a certain measure of guilt. "I forgot there would be a person here."

"Let's just get this over with," Benji responds moodily.

They wait in silence as the employee comes back with change in hand, Central, at one point, opening the car to stow the bottle in the passenger compartment.

"So, how's this going to go, then?" Benji asks. "How do you plan on pouring gasoline all over the place without anyone noticing?"

Central snorts. "I'm not going to be pouring anything," she states. "I'm probably banned. You, on the other hand-"

"No," Benji says reflexively. "Absolutely not."

"We all have to make sacrifices," Central reminds him. She then fails to stifle a laugh. "And for you, you're sacrificing your dignity, your reputation, your innocence-"

"-yep, got it-"

"-your immortal soul, a bit of cash-"

" -I did say I got-"

"-your capacity to sleep well, your purity-"

"-do you want me to do this or not?" Benji snaps, his face visibly reddened.

Central looks at Benji for a second, her smile growing wider with every second until she finally breaks down into an uncontrollable fit of laughter (though, inexplicably, the car remains straight and law-abiding).

"I'm sorry," she huffs out. "Just- just the thought of you- paying a stripper - oh my god-"

"Yes, yes, I've got it," Benji says, visibly embarrassed. "There's really no need to rub my nose in it."

"I mean, there's a little bit of a need," she says mirthfully.

Central's hysteria slowly abates along with the frequency and intensity of her laughs, until all is quiet in the car. Benji stares down hard at his lap and fiddles with his fingers, valiantly trying to ignore the twisting feeling in his stomach at the thought of what he's about to do.

They park in front of the strip club once more. Central hands Benji a twenty-dollar bill and her lighter. He pulls the gas-filled bottle from the compartment and slowly extricates himself from the car.

Just as he's about to shut the door, Central quietly says, "look, what you're doing right now, I understand how difficult it is."

"Thank you," Benji replies, pleasantly surprised by Central's sudden procurement of maturity.

Then, Central's face, at once somber and serious, quickly morphs into a smirk, and Benji's shutting the door with a blush before he can listen to her howls.

He stands for a moment in front of the entrance, wondering if he could ever be ready for this, but then he realizes he can still faintly hear Central laughing, and he pushes the door open and walks through with a pinched expression.

The strip club is just as obnoxiously loud and crowded as it was the last time, unfortunately, but unlike last time, Benji doesn't have the luxury of getting to sit quietly in a corner and work on his laptop. Instead, he forces himself to proceed to the center area, where he waits anxiously for the stripper - not the same one Central attacked, thank god - nearest to him to approach.

Benji prides himself in his acting ability - more and more frequently, he had been the one chosen to wear disguises and masks for missions, and Benji likes to think it's not just because he has the right kind of unoriginal, unremarkable physique that makes him a good substitute for many people.

Despite his skill in acting, his attempt to school his expression into one at least barely resembling interest is undoubtedly a failure. Benji imagines it looks more as if he's simultaneously constipated and trying to eject a stick from his butt, but the stripper seems to intuit his intention anyhow and kneels down, dragging one hand over her cheery red lips in a clear display of seduction.

"You like what you see?" she asks playfully.

"Yes," Benji answers stiffly, unable to prevent his eyes from widening, then forcibly relaxes his voice and posture. "I mean, certainly." He coughs once. "Definitely." The stripper doesn't move, nor does her expression change.

Benji sighs once. "Could I just get a private show?"

"I thought you'd never ask." The stripper blows a kiss at Benji and steps down from the raised platform on which she'd been dancing, landing rather gracefully considering the fact that she is wearing high heels, and beckons Benji with one finger as she begins walking toward one of the private booths, veiled by two thick, long velvet curtains.

Benji looks around nervously, wondering if someone's managed to recognize him from the fiasco about an hour ago. The stripper pauses and fixes her sharp, narrow gaze on him, though her lips twist lightly in confusion. Benji gulps, figures he's already in too deep anyhow, and is pulling the bottle from his back before he can regret it.

The gasoline pours onto the floor smooth and quiet, thankfully. Benji tries his best to seem simultaneously natural and, perhaps, a little star-struck, without making his winding and circuitous path over to the stripper not too obvious (to be more thorough with the gas, he tries to tell himself, not because I'm trying to avoid the stripper). He tucks the bottle back into his pants, making sure to tug his oversized shirt over to hide it, just before the stripper softly slides one curtain to the side, revealing an uncomfortably red-tinted room probably perfect for the things strippers and their clients come into them to do, what with the expensive chair in the middle and the abnormal amount of chairs and tables surrounding it on which Benji presumes the stripper is planning on displaying her... flexibility.

"Everything alright?" the stripper asks, though she sounds like she's still trying to seduce Benji. "You're not... regretting this, are you?"

"No, no, not at all," Benji assures her completely falsely. "Er, looking forward to it, and all."

The stripper's smirk reappears, and she moves over to lean against one of the curtains, showing off her thin stomach and-

Benji coughs rather loudly and stares firmly at the ground as he makes his way into the room.

"So," the stripper begins once Benji has sat down on the admittedly luxurious central seat. She pulls the curtain closed with one hand while her other comes to rest on her slender hip. "What do you want me to do first?"

Benji drags his head up and looks at some point between the stripper's legs. He thinks of all of the things a stripper might do for 20 dollars, and his face suddenly feels like it’s been stuffed in an oven set to 400 degrees (Celsius, of course).

"Could you leave?" he blurts out suddenly, at once relieved and embarrassed.

The stripper's coquettish expression slips for one second, and then it slides back on as something akin to understanding dawns on her.

"Oh, I see," she says. "You want to play it like that, then?"

She exits the room perhaps a bit too willingly, and even closes the curtains behind her. Benji quickly yanks the bottle out of his pants and begins expelling the gas over the seat, then onto the wooden floor, slowly approaching the velvet curtains with each step as the room begins to smell increasingly toxic and nauseating (which is a good sign, he supposes, in a very warped way).

Then, behind him, the curtains swing open. Benji freezes, bottle still in his hands, as the stripper bumps into him and staggers back a little.

"O-oh," she says, appearing genuinely confused now. "What are you doing there? I thought you'd be... waiting on the seat."

"Let it not be said that I am a coward," Benji whispers dryly under his breath, then whips around and pushes the stripper out of the room before she can notice the wet cushions and floor gleaming suspiciously red.

"Get out of here," Benji says with mock-fierceness. "You... filthy... prostitute?"

Though the stripper apparently has the manners to allow him to finish his badly-put insult, her face twists into something ugly and primal once he's finished.

"I didn't start working here to deal with jerks like you," she hisses venomously. "You want me to leave, fine, but you better pay me first."

"Yeah, of course-" Benji halts himself and thinks that perhaps he shouldn't seem so willing to give her money. "I mean, if I have to, I guess." He shoves the 20 dollar bill into her open palm and gives her a tiny pat on the shoulder, originally meant to be a vicious shove, for good measure.

"Now get on out of here," he calls awkwardly as the stripper begins her angry march back over to her podium. "You... working-class woman. That's not an insult."

Luckily, the stripper has already moved out of listening range and pays no heed to his last comment (or insult, which Benji thinks is a bit of a shame).

"Right." He sighs and turns back around to the room, quietly slipping back in. "Now I just need to set the place on fire."

He stands there for a moment and listens to the blaring dubstep that seems to reverberate throughout every part of the club and shake the floor with each note. He thinks about the rowdy crowd of people sitting or standing near the strippers, carelessly throwing away their money to women who should never have been forced into the position they're in (he suppose some women might enjoy being strippers and not just for the money, but he likes to think the majority loathe it, especially seeing as he's about to ruin the livelihood of several of them). His hands shake as he extracts the lighter from his pocket and holds it in his right hand in view of a section of gas-soaked floor.

And then he imagines Ethan sitting somewhere dark and cold, alone and afraid (well, as afraid as Ethan could ever be, which isn't very), praying for a chance to escape. He envisions Carter, Brandt, and Luther with their heads bowed down, awaiting their fates with solemn resignation.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Benji says, though his hands barely quiver as he flicks the lighter open, strikes a flame, and tosses it into the far side of the room before he can think rationally about what he's doing.

For one brief moment, the lighter lies silent and quiet save for a slight fire that envelops it. Then, a second passes, and the flames expand like a wave, engulfing the velvet seat and other pieces of furniture like an uncontrollable swarm. Benji jumps back, resists the urge to shout some utterly British curse, and slips out of the room as quickly as he can, making sure to shut the curtains behind him.

He briskly walks towards the fire extinguisher, though he has very little idea what he's actually going to do to prevent anyone from using it.

"Maybe I'll just... cover it?" he muses near-inaudibly. He leans against it, but he's barely tall enough to reach three-quarters of the way to the top.

He kneels under the case and taps it a few times for no apparent reason.

"No," he affirms despondently. "That did absolutely nothing."

"FIRE!" a man roars, loud enough to even overcome the dubstep. "EVERYONE, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

"He's doing my job for me," Benji observes, pleasantly bemused.

One of the more proactive patrons steps up to the fire extinguisher and yells at Benji to move. He steps over and allows the man to break the glass heroically, and then lunges for the extinguisher and tears it out of his hands.

"Sorry!" he calls as he begins running for the fire. The man stares, nonplussed, at his suddenly free hands.

"Make way!" Benji shouts, shoving his way through the retreating crowd. "Yes, I've got the fire extinguisher, please move."

"Give me that!" shouts the security guard from before, none the worse for wear. "I'll do it!"

"No thank you, good sir. I've got it," Benji replies politely as he steps up to the blazing fire. His left side almost seems to glow with the flickering, orange-red glare, and Benji fancies himself cool-looking for a moment. He then tosses the extinguisher into the fire. It rolls past a table and halts at the slight rise that separates the main stage from the ring of private rooms.

"What the hell are you doing!" the guard screeches, his face morphing into an anarchistic mess of panic, fear, and rage.

"What do you mean?" Benji calls back, trying his best to seem genuinely confused. "I'm saving the day, of course."

The guard steps forward with an air of menace and aggression, and Benji almost regrets his decision to toss the extinguisher as he backs up into the few (probably insane) people who have stayed to witness the fire like it were a show.

Then, a stripper comes rushing out of the retreating crowd and wraps her arms around the guard, her face covered in black streaks of make-up.

"Tom," she sobs loudly. "J-Jessica- Jessica- where is she? Do you know?"

The guard's intense, murderous glare evaporates almost instantaneously. He places his hands gently on her trembling shoulders and inquires, "what do you mean? Where was the last place you saw her?"

"Sh-she was in one of the private rooms," the stripper confesses, tears running down her face in rather copious amounts. "I know you're not supposed to go in without a client, but-"

"It doesn't matter," the guard says soothingly. "It doesn't matter. Which room, Karen?"

Karen points one finger, shaking like a crumbling leaf in a storm, at the room adjacent to the one Benji had started the fire in. It's already been completely enveloped in flames, down to the curtains which cling to the bar in charred ribbons. The guard's calm shatters, and he buries his face into Karen as quiet tremors shake his body.

Benji's growing grin fades as he turns to face the room. With a cold certainty, he realizes anybody who might've been in that room has most definitely already burnt to death. Benji has burnt himself thrice before in his entire life, and every time was as painful and agonizing as he imagined a singular sensation could be. He couldn't even imagine what torment a person would experience with their entire body covered in flames.

"Hey, guys!" another woman screams, pushing her way through the receding crowd and toward the sobbing pair. "What are you two doing!? We need to go!"

Karen gasps as if for dear life, and turns to face the woman, her mouth uttering some incomprehensible sound.

"J-Je-Jessica?" she eventually utters. The flames advance as one, licking at the heel of her shoes.

Tom's head rockets upward and he gapes at the stripper for several seconds with Karen.

"Jessica," he says hopefully. "You're here."

"Yeah, I'm here," she responds with not a small amount of annoyance in her voice. "Now can we get the heck out of here?"

The guard and Karen shake their heads concurrently, rise to their feet, and then rush out of the club, knocking over tables and chairs in their haste to escape the fire together.

Benji takes a few steps back and, as he looks at the fire, he can't help the grin that stretches over his face for a second.

He looks around the room - the fire has grown to the point where even the observers have left, leaving only Benji. For a moment, he squints at the conflagration, the wildfire that has already consumed nearly half of the club and burnt entire tables and seats to ashes.

"That's..." he begins, and wonders what exactly it is. It's frightening, certainly, but it's also stunning and awe-inspiring, and even though Benji has no intention of starting any more fires ever again, he takes a moment to appreciate the mass of fire that burns fiercely in front of him.

Then, Central bursts through the door. She halts for a moment, breathless and flushed, until she finally sees Benji staring perhaps too close to the front of the fire and bolts towards him.

"Benji!" she yells.

Benji's expression of wonderment switches back to its typical display of anxiety and nerves, and he jumps back several feet as the fire approaches.

"First off, very good job," she compliments. "Secondly, we should really hurry and get to the basement."

Benji's face falls as he suddenly realizes the reason why they're there, and, more specifically, the reason why he's there.

"The laptop," he begins dejectedly, "I didn't-"

"Right here," she interrupts with a slight grin, producing it from her back with a flourish.

"Oh," Benji says simply. "You are really the best, you know that?"

"Tell me that after we've saved your team," Central replies, though she seems pleased by the comment.

She suddenly bolts for the bar, and Benji scrambles to catch up to her.

"Do you know where it is then?" Benji shouts, barely managing to avoid an errant chair. "The entrance?"

"I had an idea," Central answers. She leaps over the bar and lands on both feet with a heavy thump, then begins desperately pulling liquor from the shelf attached to the wall.

"An idea?" Benji repeats incredulously. "You made me commit arson for an idea?" Even as he says this, he clambers over the counter and begins knocking bottles off the shelf on the other side of the bar.

"I didn't make you," Central retorts. "And my ideas are great."

"Yeah, great," Benji mutters to himself. "Great until they involve burning down a crowded building."

Then, his hand reaches for a small flask of vodka and tugs it to no avail. He frowns and tries once more, this time using all the force he can muster, and it tilts forward a little before snapping back.

"It's a switch," Benji says with wide eyes as the wall parts in the middle to reveal a cool, grey hallway leading into darkness, angled sharply downward for a section and rounded flat at the end.

From many years of experience as an agent, Benji knows the smart thing to do would be to call for reinforcements or send in a drone for reconnaissance. As they can't do either at the moment, Benji supposes the only thing they can do, however foolish and reckless as it may be, is enter themselves and hope for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought of perhaps changing the rating to Mature because of the strip club, but I really tried not to be explicit at all when describing it, and besides, I'm pretty sure most teens know what strip clubs are.
> 
> I don't really have an explanation for the part with Tom the guard and Jessica and Karen the strippers. I suppose it does show the ramifications of the reckless actions commonly taken by IMF agents, though, in this case, everyone manages to make it out okay.


	4. Disguises and Betrayal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For whatever reason, I felt like writing a darker chapter. It does get a bit grisly at the end, but it's not graphically depicted or anything.

"I knew it," Central says victoriously. "Classic over-the-top way of revealing hidden rooms."

Benji glances at Central inscrutably for a moment, then proceeds past the wall and down the slope. They slide down the steep ramp and land silently on the flat portion of the hall. Benji can barely make out a minuscule square of light at the end of the passage. He pauses, and Central wordlessly hands him the laptop and steps in front as if to guard him.

"You got anything?" Central asks impatiently as her eyes dart restlessly around the corridor.

"Give me a second." Benji's hand hurtle across the keyboard, his posture against the cool steel wall loosening as he recalls everything he needs to hack into highly encrypted security systems.

The camera feeds are surprisingly easy to hack into, but Benji carelessly chalks it up to amateur programming and design.

"Right, got it," he murmurs as his eyes scan his screen for some hint of movement or his team (mostly Ethan, though he stoutly refuses to acknowledge it). "Most of it is just black, but there is..." He taps furiously on his keyboard for several more seconds, and another video feed promptly appears.

He stares at it silently, his expression growing more and more agitated with every passing moment.

"Benji?" Central asks, turning around to give him an inquisitive look. "What is-"

She breaks off and joins Benji in gazing intently on the screen.

Most of the screen is filled with grey borders delineating each feed and absolute darkness, but, in the bottom right corner, there stands a single rectangle displaying something else: four people, heads hanging listlessly, arms and legs bound tightly to steel chairs. Benji can just barely make out bruises and cuts scattered over their bodies. The angle of the camera prevents him from seeing their faces, but Benji can guess they're unconscious for now.

"That's them, isn't it?" Central asks, unable to suppress the excitement in her voice despite their visible injuries. "It's your team."

Benji remains silent for another second, then says, "yeah, it's them."

"You don't sound very excited," Central comments.

"Well-" Benji hesitates for a moment, deciding whether or not it's really something substantial enough to bring up, but eventually continues on. "It's just that Brandt's skin seems a bit too dark. But it might be the video - it's dismally low-quality, you know, considering Pomme D'Or's wealth and power and all. You think they'd be able to afford better equipment."

Central leans in closer, squints at the video, and then frowns at it.

"I was in the girl scouts," she says offhandedly.

"W-were you?" Benji stutters, caught-off guard by the sudden change in topic.

"Now that I look at it, those binds, they seem a little..." She trails off, then gives Benji one of those strange looks, only he gets the feeling he's actually supposed to derive some meaning from it this time.

She nods her head towards his laptop, then at the wall, and then points a finger at her ear and wiggles it a little.

"Oh, right," Benji whispers, nodding his head.

"Listening-"

Central clamps a hand over his mouth and takes the laptop from Benji. He makes a vaguely affronted noise, but Central only types something and pivots the screen to face Benji.

WE DON'T KNOW HOW SENSITIVE THE BUGS ARE, the screen reads. COMMUNICATE WITH THE LAPTOP.

Benji unconsciously opens his mouth to respond, then quickly shuts it as Central's expression morphs to one of irritation.

UNDERSTOOD, he types. YOU THINK THEY KNOW WE ARE HERE?

He turns the screen back to Central. She types a few more words, then rotates it around once more.

DEFINITELY.

Benji tries to ignore the sudden goosebumps crawling up his arm at the thought. Then, he looks up at Central, whose face seems to betray nothing but determination and suspicion. He supposes she has the right to be unconcerned, what with her Judo skills and such, but as he types something in, he can't help but ask.

YOU DO NOT SEEM VERY CONCERNED. WHY.

Central's lips very briefly quirk in amusement. THEY WON'T PURSUE US. THIS WAS THEIR PLAN ALL ALONG. WE'LL NEED TO ACT QUICKLY, HOWEVER, OR THEY WILL NOTICE THIS DELAY.

Plan? Had they been tricked? Benji can feel his heart thumping painfully in his chest, and his breaths are suddenly labored. He finally notices the flames behind them, which have spread exponentially since they left the strip club and now bar the way they came.

He mostly fails to push aside his concern as he types, PLEASE TELL ME YOU HAVE A PLAN TOO.

YES, she replies. I'M GUESSING THIS HALL WILL LEAD DIRECTLY TO THE ROOM THEY'RE BEING HELD. I WILL GO TO THE FIRST PERSON AND TRY TO FREE THEM.

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME, Benji types back.

As Benji turns the computer back, Central furrows her eyebrows in concentration, and the sound of keys clacking becomes much more frequent. Almost a minute passes, and when she finally shows Benji the screen, it reads:

WHILE I RELEASE THE FIRST PERSON, LOOK FOR A GUN ON ONE OF THEM, PROBABLY THE FURTHEST PERSON. THEY WILL BE UNPREPARED. YOU WILL HAVE TIME TO GRAB IT. I WILL NEUTRALIZE THE FIRST PERSON. SHOOT THE OTHERS IN THE FOOT AND TIE THEM UP. HOLD THEM AT GUNPOINT WHILE I SPEAK.

Benji's stomach sinks as he reads her message and belatedly realizes why Brandt's skin seemed too dark, and why, now that he thinks about it, there is a slight discoloration between the nape of Carter's neck and the barely-visible skin of her face.

They're fakes.

Of course they're fakes. Benji would spend a few minutes properly admonishing himself, only Central's expression screams urgency, and so he only nods once, shuts the laptop with a click, and follows her as she twists around and walks.

They proceed down that passage for a minute, silent and anxious (well, Benji is, at least), and the square of light grows slowly larger. The butterflies in his stomach grow proportionally more agitated, and Benji takes a second to hate listening bugs, because he would really appreciate the chance to talk to Central further and ask her what exactly she meant by "SPEAK" and why she thinks it's a good idea to walk straight into what they now know is a trap. Instead, he has nothing but his thoughts, which he knows from decades of experience usually serve to only make him more uneasy and stressed.

And yet despite the fact they met perhaps 5 hours ago, despite the fact that she admitted to having no formal espionage training, despite the fact that she recklessly came to take down Pomme D'Or with nothing but a few guns, Benji trusts Central. She is certifiably crazy, with derring-do enough to match the most suicidal IMF agents, but she has also shown herself to be competent, brave, and loyal. She handed over her gun as if it were nothing, and then she risked life and limb to save Benji from his would-be kidnappers. In the face of a substantial obstacle, she came up with a functional solution (though certainly not one Benji ever wishes to repeat), and then she saw through Pomme D'Or's ploy like a veteran agent while Benji, the actual veteran agent, was played for a fool. He feels a strange mix of fondness, warmth, and shame as he looks at her back, but it's enough to calm down the butterflies in his stomach, if only by a little.

And then, almost before he realizes, the square of light has nearly encompassed the whole of his vision, and he can now see the four figures, bound and ostensibly unconscious, that appear to be his friends.

Central turns suddenly to face Benji, and she seems almost scared for once. Benji reminds himself that though she may seem like an experienced field agent, she still is a civilian, technically, and that, really, Benji should be taking the lead on this mission (only he's perfectly okay with letting her be in charge, and not only because the thought of being in charge himself makes Benji want to curl up in a hole). She nods once, whirls around, and rushes for the first person - Brandt, or Fake Brandt, Benji supposes.

"Thank god," she breathes out, relief clear in her voice. "I thought we'd never find you guys."

Benji snorts as he walks past Central and scans hurriedly for a gun.

Fake Brandt remains silent as Central unties the loose rope holding his arms behind the chair. The room is soundless for a moment, though tension looms like a crushing weight over them.

Then, Fake Brandt twists around and propels his elbow at Central just as Benji spots a pistol on Fake Ethan's lap (and now that he thinks about it, the angle at which his head hangs seems intentional, as if he specifically positioned it to block the camera's view of the firearm).

Almost in unison, Central ducks under Fake Brandt's sharp elbow just as Benji pitches himself at Fake Ethan, one arm outstretched. The laptop falls out of the crook of his elbow and clatters onto the floor.

Fake Carter and Fake Luther burst into action at once, launching out of their chairs. Fake Luther rams into Central headfirst, and she utters a choked groan as she's roughly hurled onto the floor. The gun slips out of Benji's fingers in his moment of distraction.

Fake Ethan rises as well and whips around with pistol in hand, while Carter lunges at Benji and tackles him onto the floor.

His vision is suddenly filled with Carter's vicious smirk and wide, unblinking eyes, and he notes disconcertingly that her eyes are the wrong color.

He squirms underneath her helplessly until the press of cold metal against his forehead causes him to cease movement all together.

"I would not do that if I were you," Fake Ethan says victoriously in a decidedly non-Ethan voice.

"Damn it!" Central shouts. A loud cracking sound echoes around the room for a moment, followed by a howl of pain, and Benji manages to tilt his head to the side and sight her just as she kicks Fake Luther in the head.

Fake Luther, holding his right wrist in his other hand and glaring wrathfully at Central, barely budges under the kick. He rises and swings one hefty arm at Central's midsection. She narrowly leaps out of the way, and turns around to elbow Fake Brandt in the gut before he can grab her.

"Can't you guys get one person?" Fake Ethan shouts, exasperation and frustration present on his face in equal amounts. "Don't make me go over there."

"It is okay," Fake Carter says in a heavy French accent. "I can hold him. He is weak."

"Well," Benji gasps out, his breathing weak and shallow from the knee pressed harshly against his diaphragm, "forgive me if I don't work out every day. Some people have more useful things to do."

He turns his attention back to Central, who is flipping over Fake Brandt's hunched back while Fake Luther lies on the ground, still conscious but clearly in pain.

She plants a foot in Fake Brandt's direction and pivots on it. A loud, cracking sound fills the room as she forces the back of her clenched fist into his cheek, knocking him back and onto the ground. Fake Luther, at this point crouching with a hand held to his stomach, lets out an aggravated roar and charges at Central.

She's prepared this time, rotating clockwise around Fake Luther's bulky body. His capacity to halt his reckless charge before he hits the wall is made much less impressive when she drives her elbow into his back, then grips his feet with both hands and, with a slight grunt, flips him 180 degrees such that he lands solidly on his head and collapses limply onto the ground with one last whimper.

"Screw this," Fake Ethan growls, handing the gun to Fake Carter and rising to engage Central. Benji's struggle begins anew until Fake Carter slams both her elbow and the gun into his face.

Unlike Fake Luther and Fake Brandt, who fought recklessly and with unchecked aggression, Fake Ethan is much more cautious. As he jabs at Central, her counters are met with agile steps and dodges that prevent her from doing more than barely grazing him with the tips of her fingers. As he launches one foot straight out with sudden force, Central barely swivels out of the way in time. Her movements seem slightly less smooth and quick than they were before, and her expression, when Benji glimpses it, seems uncertain and weary.

"What's wrong?" Fake Ethan taunts as Central takes a step back. "You afraid of an actual fight?"

Central, thankfully, doesn't rise to the bait, though her eyes do narrow slightly. She dashes forward, and this time, her attacks seem not hesitant, but rather intentionally reticent. Her dodges remain narrow, but for whatever reason, Benji never feels as if she'll actually get hit.

Central hurls a fist upward at the same time she swings her leg at his torso. Fake Ethan snaps his head back and rolls out of the path of her leg - and then Central's other foot is suddenly situated in his gut, and he rolls onto his back with a surprised yelp.

"You modified it," Central calls, her tone all confidence and triumph. "But in the end, it's still the same old fighting technique."

"The hell are you talking about?" Fake Ethan mutters as he staggers back to his feet.

"Your moves," Central clarifies smugly. "Sure, they're a little more free-flow than I predicted, but you're definitely an agent of Pomme D'Or after all."

Fake Ethan's expression morphs from confusion to pure, unadulterated rage, and when he hurls himself at Central, his attacks are suddenly sloppy and uncontrolled. Even Benji, who could never claim to be anything approximating an expert at hand-to-hand combat, can tell that he's lost.

Central ducks out of the way of a kick, then twirls around a punch and intercepts the next. She knees him once in the stomach, then thrusts her palm into his nose and grasps his head with her other hand.

Fake Ethan lets out an agonized groan as she wraps an arm around his neck and begins to squeeze, but he has enough strength to roll back, elbow her in the chest, and slip out of her grasp.

"Matt!" Fake Carter screeches. She removes her elbow from Benji's face and stands up, pitching herself at Central's recovering form with a furious howl.

"No, Coletta," Matt gasps out, one hand moving to apply pressure to his bleeding nose. "Use the gun!"

Coletta whips towards Matt for one second, and Central exploits it to leap to her feet and grab her gun-wielding hand.

"Wha-" Coletta manages to let out just before Central twists her wrist and catapults her over her body. By the time Coletta lands with a resounding snap and crash, Central has already turned around and pointed the pistol at the temple of Fake Ethan's head.

"Restrain her," Central barks, though it takes Benji a moment to realize she's talking to him. He scrambles up from his position on the floor and awkwardly flops onto Coletta, desperately hoping it's enough to incapacitate her for a few seconds as he fiddles with a nearby rope.

"What was your plan in coming here?" Fake Ethan asks, amusement audible in his voice. "You clearly knew we were fakes, so you must have come here with a plan." Benji manages to loop the rope around Coletta's feet and makes an admittedly weak knot as she begins to struggle against him.

"I don't have to tell you anything," Central says coldly. She looks up at the ceiling, and shouts, "isn't that right?"

Her voice rings throughout the air, but when it finally dissipates, there is naught but the sound of Coletta struggling.

"Just-" he says as she elbows him in the face. "Could you just stay still for a second?"

"Shut up!" she replies irately. "I will not be held down!"

Benji, after a few seconds of fiddling and quiet mumbling, manages to secure her wrists, and leans back with a sigh of relief. She continues to wriggle around for a few more seconds, and then collapses dejectedly onto the floor. Benji moves to scoop up his laptop, hoping that its price tag was at least partially because of its sturdiness.

"Huh," Central comments quietly. "I really thought that would work."

Benji frowns at her, then looks up at gray ceiling. A single light is fixed in the center, but, as far as he can tell, there are no speakers.

"I don't think they can talk to us," Benji says, panting slightly. "I don't see any speakers."

"I know you can see us!" Central shouts, her hand now pressing the pistol against Fake Ethan's forehead. "Even if you can't talk, you know exactly what will happen if you don't listen to my demands!

"I want to know where the IMF agents are being held! I don't care if you send a messenger or what, but if, within an hour, I don't have a location, all four of your agents are dead!"

Fake Ethan laughs mirthlessly. "For one who seems so knowledgeable about us, you don't even know, do you?"

Central turns sharply to face Fake Ethan. "Know what?"

Fake Ethan's face is devoid of joy or triumph. In fact, if masks could be made pale, Benji imagines his face would be completely white.

"There has been a... change in leadership," Coletta croaks out. Suddenly, the room shudders and tilts.

"What was that?" Benji half-asks, half-shouts, his voice filled with fear and confusion. "Is there an earthquake happening?"

"Coletta!" Fake Ethan snaps angrily. "Don't!"

"And why not?" Coletta chokes out. As the floor and ceiling suddenly begin to shift towards each other, Benji can see the glimmer of tears in her eyes.

"We will die here anyway," she says sorrowfully. "Will you stay loyal to him to the end?"

"I will stay loyal to my principles!" Fake Ethan shouts back. "I am a proud member of Pomme D'Or, and I'll not betray the trust of my comrades and friends by helping our enemies, even at the end!"

Benji unconsciously begins edging towards the exit of the room, his face falling as he realizes that the hallway seems to be at a lower elevation than it was before, and that the room seems to be quite a lot smaller.

"But don't you see?" Coletta cries desperately. "Our friends will die too! He does not care about the cause or the people!"

Central looks indecisively at the slowly approaching ceiling, then back at Fake Ethan.

"Come on, Central!" Benji yells, panicked. "We have to get out of here!"

With one final glance at the proud Pomme D'Or agent in front of her, she swings around and sprints for the exit.

"Wait!" Coletta shouts desperately just before they jump out of the room. "Our leader's name is Ambrosia! He is holding your friends at-" she falters slightly.

"3320 Drenchwood Street," Fake Ethan interjects quietly. He rushes to Coletta's side and undoes her binds, but neither of them make any move to escape. Instead, they stand up and face each other, their hands interlocked.

"Please," he says, even as he continues to gaze despondently at Coletta's tear-ridden face. "I know you don't owe us anything, but don't let Ambrosia undo all the work we've done. I know Pomme D'Or may seem like an morally bankrupt, evil criminal organization to you two, but it was the pride and hope of my family. Its goal isn't wrong. Save your friends. Take down Ambrosia-"

The room is now only about 3 meters tall, and Benji can't help but hyperventilate slightly as he thinks of what's about to happen - he and Central may escape, but it's clear Coletta and Fake Ethan (and he doesn't even know his name, the name of this man he's about to watch die) are intent on staying. Central continues to stare at the doomed pair standing in the middle of the room, pistol clenched tightly in her right hand.

"-But please," Fake Ethan continues, "spare our friends and families. They truly believe in the mission of Pomme D'Or, and they should not be punished for Ambrosia's transgressions."

Benji takes a single step forward before Central shoves him back. "Come with us," he shouts desperately over the rumbling of the room. "You can still escape-"

Coletta and Fake Ethan shake their heads as one.

"If he learns we have survived, he will kill our families," Coletta says. She turns to face them, and her face breaks into a half-smile, half-grimace, tears still flowing in rivulets down her face. She rips the mask off her face and tosses it to the side, and Fake Ethan does the same. Because he doesn't know what else to do, because everything's become too much and he doesn't even know Fake Ethan's real name, and because he feels a little guilty for doing nothing even as he knows there's nothing he can do, Benji gazes at them and does his best to memorize their real faces.

"He does not tolerate disobedience. He has slaughtered so many already," Coletta mutters. "So many times I have obeyed him thoughtlessly. So many times I should have raised my voice and protested."

Central raises her gun, though her arm shakes uncontrollably.

"No one should die this way," she says helplessly.

"It will not be a painful death," Coletta assures, though Benji isn't sure if she's speaking to Central or herself. "You two should leave now."

She turns to face Fake Ethan once more. The walls grumble and groan around them, screeching metal wailing high-pitched, and Central drops her pistol and pushes Benji forward. The ceiling is nearly touching Benji's head now, and he and Central instinctively crouch down and walk the last short stretch to the edge of the death trap. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Fake Luther and Fake Brandt, lying unconscious and silent near each other, and he turns sharply away. Guilt floods through his body as he realizes he had almost forgotten they were there, like their lack of consciousness made them somehow less significant and alive than Coletta and Fake Ethan. And yet there's not nearly enough time to drag even one of their bodies out anymore, and both he and Central knows it.

"Marcus," Coletta whispers softly. "I-"

"I know," Fake Ethan - Marcus - says. "I know."

And the last thing Benji sees in that grey room before he leaps out with Central is two people kneeling, embracing each other desperately, resigned to their fates and trying to make the best of a very impromptu death sentence.

He wonders if that's the best they can wish for - a satisfying death.

The whistle of the air and clang of the metal floor as he lands clumsily do nothing to conceal the snapping of bone, the visceral crushing and tearing of flesh, and the pitiful whimper that emits from the wall of grey steel behind them.

Benji crumbles onto the metal floor and gazes unseeingly at the ceiling of the corridor. After a moment, Central collapses beside him.

They lie there for half a minute with nothing but the faint trill of air to fill the hall.

Then, the steel wall begins to split once more into ceiling and floor. Benji allows the sound of screeching metal to imprint on his mind, and then he reluctantly raises his head and taps Central's shoulder lightly.

"We should leave," he mutters as if through a haze, leaning over to pick up the laptop. He stumbles forlornly away from the room, fearful of seeing what is now there, and he soon hears Central's lethargic footsteps following him.

"3320 Drenchwood Street," Central says quietly.

They continue to drift aimlessly through the dark.

"Can you-" her voice breaks. "Can you check the time?"

Benji silently opens the laptop. "12:11," he announces. "Less than 11 hours until the execution," he notes tonelessly.

They walk for another half a minute, to the point where Benji can almost see a faint light from the entrance to the tunnel coming down the beginning slope, when Central speaks again.

"It was too slow," she says.

"Too slow?" Benji repeats sluggishly, suddenly wishing he could just lie down here and sleep.

"Too slow to kill us," she clarifies. She barks out a painful, humorless laugh. "It was almost comical how goddamned slow it was."

Central doesn't say anything more, but Benji understands. The room wasn't meant to kill (though Benji doesn't doubt Ambrosia would've appreciated it if his four agents had managed to beat, restrain, and kill them). It was meant to send a message: that Ambrosia has complete control over Pomme D'Or and its agents, to the point where he can essentially coerce them into committing a very slow and prolonged form of suicide. That Ambrosia is fully willing to sacrifice his agents if only to make a point, and that he is ruthless and cold and bound by no morals and no principles.

Benji recalls Fake Ethan's - Marcus's words. He had asked them to spare his friends. But could they really afford to? Perhaps Ambrosia had a leash on all of his agents, a way to unconditionally control them, the same way he had imprisoned Coletta and Marcus through their families. Perhaps most worked for him voluntarily anyhow, but either way, they probably didn't have a choice.

They finally arrive at the sloped entrance, and Benji gives voice to the thought they're both having.

"How are we going to get back up?" Benji asks, peering up at the light rays that shine tauntingly at them through the opening in the wall.

The corners of Central's lips lift, but it's an exhausted and jaded thing and most definitely not a smile. "It's just one thing after another, isn't it," she deadpans.

"My thoughts exactly," says Benji.


	5. Firefighters and Calm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to give Benji a chance to fight independently for once. Personally, the fireman section is one of my favorite parts of this fic.

Their solution ends up being no solution at all. After several minutes of waiting at the ramp (in silence, just in case Ambrosia is still listening), with Benji seated and peering at his laptop while Central paces around the end of the slope, she calls him over just as a layer of water suddenly flows down the incline from the entrance of the tunnel and past their feet.

"Firefighters," she comments expressionlessly. "And our only way of getting out, probably."

"Do you think they know?" Benji asks as another stream of water bursts into the tunnel and slides down the ramp.

"Know what?"

"Well," Benji says, biting his lip. "Who started the fire."

"They're not going to just leave us here because they suspect us," Central responds. "We'll worry about everything else once we're out of here."

Before Benji can even consider stopping her, she's yelling at the entrance.

"Hello!" she shouts, her voice booming around the steel passage. "Can anyone hear us!?"

In lieu of response, another focused stream of water ricochets off the sloped ceiling, then stops suddenly. A head bearing the hat of a firefighter, grinning and flushed, pops out from the square of light above them.

"You two alright?" he asks them.

"Uh," Central says smartly, then pauses with an expression of intense focus on her face.

"Yes," she calls out eventually. "Could you please get us out of here?"

"One sec." The firefighter's head recedes through the square and disappears, and Benji can faintly hear the sound of something heavy being dragged over.

"We'll get arrested," Benji predicts gloomily. "Of course, they'll ask us what we were doing here in this secret tunnel, and we won't have an answer for them."

"I'll fight off the police if I have to," Central says rather casually. Benji doesn't doubt her.

"Did you say something?" The firefighter's head reappears through the opening, along with a thick length of rope that descends down the slope, the bottom slightly dampening.

"No, no, nothing at all," Central says with a forced smile.

She turns to Benji. "You should go first."

"Wha-" Benji splutters. "Why me? I- I'm not even sure I can do this."

Central presses her lips together tightly and says nothing. Benji hesitantly moves to stow the laptop in his back, tucked between his sweatpants and waist, and prays that it's secure enough to handle the climb.

"It's perfectly alright, sir," the firefighter assures him with a confidence he envies. "Just take it slow. I'll be pulling you up as well to make it go faster."

"Easy for you to say," Benji mutters even as he grabs the damp rope with both hands and tugs himself upward.

The ascent is surprisingly easier than he first expected, though made more difficult by the wet steel on which he's barely managing to keep his balance and the wetter rope that his hands seem to be having a hard time clinging to.

"You can do it!" Central shouts with a faint sliver of amusement. "Just don't look down!"

Benji almost looks back at Central to glare at her before deciding that, regardless of her tone, her advice is sound.

"Almost there, sir!" the firefighter yells encouragingly, though Benji is aware he's barely halfway up. His eyes squint and blink against the blinding light coming from the opening, but he manages to keep his feet relatively stable on the slippery steel.

The rope tugs him involuntarily every once in a while (courtesy of the firefighter, he assumes), propelling him with unexpected force up the slide. His damp shoes squish audibly as he plants them firmly and does his best to fight the pull of gravity.

Even as he cringes at his own cowardice, he eventually caves and asks, "could you just pull me the rest of the way up?"

"Not a problem, sir!" the firefighter responds happily. The force on the rope grows stronger and steadier, and Benji focuses all of his might on simply holding on as he is dragged up the last stretch.

Arms covered in bulky yellow and black cotton sleeves reach for him, and he gratefully grabs them and almost sags in relief as he finally passes the square of light and tumbles down onto a damp, scorched wooden floor.

"Oh, thank you," Benji mutters happily. "I was afraid I'd be trapped down there forever."

The firefighter remains silent, but Benji barely notices as he walks back to gaze down at the grey slope.

"Central!" he shouts, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. "Your turn now!"

"Yep, got it," says the much less enthused voice down below.

Benji is, by his own admission, a very weak fighter, and yet his reflexes remain just sharp enough to enable him to jump back frightfully as the butt of a red axe - a firefighter's axe - swings at him.

"Ah!" he cries out, barely ducking out of the way as the axe swoops over his head and embeds itself in the wooden counter. "What are you bloody doing?"

"Benji?" Central calls out anxiously. "Everything okay up there?"

"No, everything's not okay up here!" Benji bellows as he rolls across the bar, narrowly avoiding another axe swing. "The fireman's trying to kill me!"

Said fireman has a disturbing grin in his face and a dangerously sharp axe that gleams in the faint purple light covering the room.

Benji, because even he sometimes knows how to set his priorities straight, remembers to set down the laptop on the floor before leaping away from the next attack.

"Just try to survive until I get up there!" Central's voice resounds from the tunnel.

The firefighter grins viciously and swings his axe down on the rope. Benji watches in abject horror as it snaps from its anchor and slips down the tunnel.

A moment passes in complete silence.

"Probably should have expected that," Central shouts wryly.

Benji's first instinct is to sprint for the door and hope the homicidal fireman cares about the public's perception of him, but he stills as he thinks about Central. He's more than aware she can handle herself and also that, unlike him (he had to leave his rifle in the car, foolishly believing that he would have no need to fight with Central with him and cognizant of the fact he wasn't likely to be allowed access to the strip club with an AK-47 in hand), she has a gun, but the mere idea of abandoning her in any capacity makes Benji feel sick to his stomach.

"I was told not to kill you unless I have to," the fireman growls as he begins striding towards Benji with a murderous glare. "Please don't make me kill you."

"I'm not making you do anything," Benji retorts. "You're the one who suddenly pulled out an axe and started swinging."

At the very least, the clear heft of the axe, along with the fact that it was never designed with murder in mind, is enough to slow down the fireman to the point where Benji can barely dodge his blows. He rolls out of the way as the fireman hurls the axe downward and leaves a gaping hole in the fragile wooden floor, then scrambles near the front of the club in an attempt to put some distance between them.

As he stares fearfully at the fireman, an idea occurs to him. It is certifiably insane, recklessly dangerous, and has nearly no chance of working, but somewhere deep inside him, Benji feels exhilarated. He wonders if this is how Ethan feels all the time during missions.

The fireman is clearly unprepared for Benji's rush at him, and it shows as he handles his axe indecisively as Benji leaps at him and nearly knocks the axe out of his hands. His recovery is quick, and he reaffirms his grip on the axe as he drives it into the floor once more. Benji rolls out of the way once more, and he almost feels glad when he sees the fireman's expression change from mere aggression to annoyance.

"Will you stay still!?" The fireman screeches, frustrated and exasperated, like it was somehow wrong for Benji to dodge his attacks.

"How about," he taunts, feeling a sudden surge in confidence as he peddles over to the steel tunnel opening, "you stop being a pansy and actually hit me?"

The roar the fireman lets out as he charges at Benji is somewhere between the squeal of a little girl and the grating noise of steel against steel (and gods, why did he have to think that now, of all times), and it's most certainly an unpleasant and nightmarish sound. Benji's legs tremble, but he forces himself to stand his ground.

The fireman knocks over burnt remnants of chairs and tables, launching himself roughly over the bar and knocking down a lone glass in his fury.

"Central!" Benji shouts fearfully, not removing his gaze from the firefighter. "Get your rifle ready!"

"Wh-" she utters, then falls silent, and Benji can only pray she understands as he crouches slightly and tries to recall the Central's seemingly superhuman flip maneuver.

He frowns at his wrist for a moment, pondering which way he's supposed to twist his wrist and if he should do anything special because of the axe the fireman's holding, but then said fireman is inches away from him and practically lobbing his axe at him.

He clutches the fireman's right wrist with both hands, and even as he feels the sting of the axe as it grazes his leg, he pulls the fireman over the edge and down the slope.

"Now!" he shouts down the tunnel, scrambling away from the opening before he involuntarily finds himself following the fireman.

The crack of a gunshot rebounds through the tunnel and into the club, followed by two more shots quickly after. Benji holds his breath fearfully for one second, and silence reigns like a sadistic tyrant over the room.

"I got him," Central yells.

"Oh, thank god," Benji breathes out. He feels a sudden urge to fall face-first onto the darkened, burnt wood floor and whisper as many phrases of gratitude as he knows.

"The rope's down here," she states. "Stand by the edge. I'll try to toss it up to you."

"Right, right," Benji calls back, his voice still filled with relief. "Got it. Awaiting the rope."

The thick cord comes out of the dark like a snake. Benji leans over the edge as much as he dares to, one hand clutching a wooden plank tightly while the other reaches desperately for the rope.

He manages to grasp it with his finger tips, but it's enough of a hold to allow him to throw the rope over his shoulder and beyond the opening.

"Got it!" he shouts proudly, kneeling down to retie the frayed end to the wooden anchor rooted in the floor.

"Ready?" Central asks, no attempt made now to hide her nervousness.

"Ready," Benji calls back as he tightens the knot and pivots to face the opening.

The rope begins to strain against the anchor, but not nearly enough to pull it out of its place. Benji places both of his hands on the rope and begins pulling upward as he imagines the firefighter did, and perhaps he's doing it correctly and not screwing it up like he tends to with most things, because Central doesn't ask him to stop.

After a few seconds of quiet, Central asks, "are you alright?"

"Fine," Benji says easily, ignoring the stinging pain originating from the cut on his leg.

"I underestimated you," Central admits. "I was about ready to try to climb with bullet holes when you flung the guy down here."

Benji ignores the part about climbing with bullet holes because, honestly, he doesn't want to know, opting instead to say, "I am an IMF agent, you know. I can fight."

"Sort of," he adds under his breath.

Central huffs out a laugh. "I don't doubt it."

It's almost shameful how quickly Central makes it up the incline compared to Benji. He leans over and pulls her over the edge, and they both roll onto their backs with sighs.

"We could say we were in the bathroom," Central mutters.

"What?" Benji asks, his eyes closing tiredly.

"When we get out and everyone's wondering how we survived the fire, we can say we were in the bathroom," Central explains patiently, though Benji thinks it's more a bone-deep weariness and exhaustion than the actual virtue.

"You don't think anyone will suspect?" Benji questions lightly.

"We should try to find a way to get the wall back," Central says after a second instead of answering, likely because she has no idea whether anyone will suspect them and how much they'll care anyhow. "They'll definitely get suspicious if they go down and find the fireman's dead body."

Benji leans lethargically onto his side, ignoring the hard and uncomfortable press of wood against his face.

"You think he was a member of Pomme D'Or?" Benji questions.

Central hums slightly. "Probably. Don't see why some random firefighter would just want to kill you."

Benji laughs. "Oh, you'd be surprised," he says with surprising levity, "just how many people seem to want to kill me."

"I've seen," Central replies teasingly. "You're a real magnet for trouble, Benji Dunn."

"And you're not?" Benji returns without any heat. "It seems everywhere I go with you, there's someone trying to stab us, or shoot us, or crush us, or do some other very violent thing to us."

Central chuckles shakily, like she isn't yet sure if she can relax for even these few minutes of rest.

"Your team," she begins, and Benji can't help but tense slightly at the mention of them. "They're good people, right?"

Benji can't really blame Central for asking, considering the business they're in and everything they've gone through already on this one day alone.

With his eyes still shut, he calmly responds, "the best."

"Tell me about them," Central says, and though there's clear relief and some amount of tranquility in her voice, Benji can detect a faint trace of desperation as well - desperation to simply have a normal conversation, to rest and converse and not have to worry about surviving for a few minutes.

Benji is more than happy to assuage her distress, however slight it may be. "Well," he says with clear fondness, "there's Luther. Big fellow, bald. He's a jack of all trades, I suppose. He can hold his own in a fight, but he's also good with technology."

"Sounds like a useful guy to have," Central observes.

"Yeah, definitely," Benji replies with a slight grin. "Never have to worry about him failing to do his part." He thinks back to the night before, when they had all been together, huddling in the cold and waiting for the meeting to start. Luther had insisted on going into the field while Benji stayed behind. He'd said, 'my ass has gone numb from all the backseat support. I swear, if I have to sit back and just watch for another day, I'll go insane.' He'd had a little amused glint in his eye as he'd said it, but Benji could tell he was worried about the meeting. He ponders now the possibility that Luther might have known something was wrong and purposely relegated Benji to tech support, but he quickly rejects the notion - Luther's instincts are good, but if he had known, then he must have also known that it would've been much better if he had made it out rather than Benji.

"Then there's Carter," Benji continues before he can think about it further. "She's a bit aggressive, to be honest, but she's also one of the best agents the IMF has."

"A bit aggressive?" Central chortles. "I thought every agent in the IMF was a bit aggressive."

"Hey," Benji protests playfully. "Not every agent. I'm an agent of the IMF, you know, and I don't think anyone could ever call me aggressive."

"You're an exception," Central retorts with affection. "I don't think there's any agent out there quite like you."

A flood of warmth course through Benji’s body. "I'll take that as a compliment."

Central turns over to face him, her face radiating with that rare, beatific smile. "You should. I mean," she adds, "I don't want to inflate your ego too much, but you're a good agent, Benji. And a good person. I'm glad I met you."

Benji feels his cheeks suddenly flush, utterly unused to praise as he is.

"I'm glad too," he murmurs softly. "I probably would have died a few hours ago without you. I know we only met today, but it feels like I've known you my entire life."

"I'd say being in several life-and-death situations together tends to make one feel that way," Central says dryly, and Benji chuckles in agreement.

They remain quiet for a moment, and Benji basks in the silence. He feels a grin pulling at his lips incessantly, and a joy within him that defies everything that he has just experienced and gone through. The numbness and pain are still there, but they are very strongly obscured by a giddiness at the mere thought of lying beside this woman. He knows distantly, in the same way one is aware of one's death, that they'll have to get up soon, find a way to shut the opening, and drive off, likely into another trap, to save his team. And yet, despite all of that, he is content at the moment to simply rest here by Central and speak about something that doesn't have to do with surviving by the skin of their teeth or reckless plans or Pomme D'Or.

"Brandt," Benji starts again. "You know, when we met him, we all thought he was just an analyst for the Secretary of Defense? Well, chief analyst, but none of us knew he was an ex-agent."

"He didn't tell you?" Central inquires mildly.

"It's a bit of a long story," Benji says with a mix of trepidation and nostalgia. He recalls trains and hotels, daring stunts and concierge disguises, hushed arguments and emotional confessions, and the sudden, overwhelming sense of relief he felt when he learned they had somehow succeeded in deactivating the nuke.

"I wish we had the time," Central says regretfully.

"We have a little more time," Benji replies, stubbornly keeping his eyes closed and shied away from the light of reality. "I'll tell you about... Ethan."

"Ethan Dunn," Central completes. "He must be special, if Pomme D'Or isn't executing him with the rest of his team. Well-" she adds, "-if any information on that document was true at all."

Benji steadfastly ignores the thought that the execution may be sooner than they had thought, or that it might have even happened already, burying his mind deep within the past to hide from the bleak prospects of their mission.

"Ethan," he repeats. "I- I don't even know where to start with Ethan."

"How did you meet him?"

Benji grins at the memory. "It was a routine mission, actually. Nothing exciting, or, well, it wasn't meant to be anything exciting. I had joined the IMF pretty recently, and it was the most important mission I had been involved in thus far. Ethan was the main operative, of course, and I was tasked with helping him infiltrate the suspected hideout of a local gang. I still remember the first gunshot when things went south and Ethan asked me to guide him out. I bloody panicked," he confesses with a smile. "I had no idea what to do, but Ethan didn't seem perturbed at all by my panicked commands. He followed me without hesitation, and when I screwed up and sent him the wrong way, he only berated me for a few seconds after he'd finished off the last guy."

Benji pauses for a moment, then says, "when he got back, I met him in the hallway, and he waved off all of my apologies and asked his handler, right in front of me, if I could be paired with him again. I don't have the foggiest why he did that, but he did. He asked for me after I had nearly led him to his death.

"But Ethan's always been that way. He's always had unwavering, unjustified faith in me, and the most I can do is try my best to catch up to him. Honestly, I don't think that man cares one bit for his own life," he says adoringly. "He's always looking out for others, for me, putting himself in the most ridiculously dangerous situations if it helps him complete the mission and save just one more life."

"It sounds like you've got a bit of a crush on him," Central comments teasingly without a trace of malice in her voice.

Benji's eyes snap open and he almost waves his hand in denial as his face begins to heats up.

"Ethan? No. Not at all. The fact that you could even suggest such a thing-"

"-shows that I have a functioning brain," Central interjects smugly.

Benji tries not to pout as he sits up, leaning against the blackened wall with his arms folded.

"Can we just go?" he asks, and probably utterly fails in trying to seem irritated rather than embarrassed.

"If you say so," Central says, rising with a clear smirk on her face. At the very least, she doesn't mention Ethan again, though she does glance at Benji once with a glint in her eye before turning to the shelf behind the bar. She reaches for the flask of vodka they'd used to open up the wall and tugs at it, and the wall obediently slides back into place with much rumbling and shaking.

"Right," Benji says as she turns around. "We should go then."

Her smile fades completely, replaced with a flat line and narrowed eyes, clenched fists and measured steps, as she nods and walks towards the exit.

"It's been a very long day," Central admits. "But if we can just save your team-"

"-it'll all be over, hopefully," Benji finishes.

And with one last, almost wistful look back at the burnt bar, Central opens the door and steps through with Benji into the blinding sunlight.

"There's absolutely nothing on the internet," Benji complains. He's hunched over slightly in his seat, staring intently at the slightly cracked screen of his laptop, while Central leans on her elbows and looks down at the coffee she ordered, steaming in its plastic cup..

In a day full of disasters and terrible luck, Benji counted it as a win when they found a cafe with free WiFi and, even better, cheap coffee. There are very few people at the moment, and the barista at the front doesn't seem particularly perturbed by the presence of two strangers within this tiny town. Perhaps he's used to new arrivals.

He closes the window with a frustrated tap of his index finger and moves onto satellite image. The publicly available maps have a conspicuous black rectangle where a building should reside, but Benji fortunately managed to gain the clearance for this particular mission to utilize one of America's satellites.

Central droops slightly and lifts the coffee slowly to her lips, sipping quietly and languidly. She seems almost haggard, but her eyes remain alert and present.

"Hey," she says with forced optimism, "maybe that means we've got the right place. Ambrosia couldn't have predicted that his agents would give us their location." She doesn't sound very certain.

"Well, it's our only lead," Benji replies glumly. The blurry mess of pixels on his screen resolves into a discernible image, revealing a tall, nondescript brick building at 3320 Drenchwood Street. As he blinks owlishly at it, he notices that the entire street is filled with similar structures, all slightly dilapidated and possessing absolutely no signs or labels indicating their purpose.

Central, likely noticing Benji's frown, abandons her coffee and slides her chair over.

"Got something?" she asks eagerly even as she peers at the laptop screen.

"This," Benji utters simply. "I don't think it helps us any though."

"It's a bit strange, isn't it?" Central muses out loud as her eyes continue to scan the image.

"What is?"

"Well, there's just a street full of generic, probably abandoned buildings. That might be normal in a city, but in a small town like this..."

"You think it's a trap," Benji interprets halfheartedly.

Central snorts in response. "Of course it's a trap. If there's one thing Pomme D'Or loves, it's traps like these. I'm guessing they have people positioned in the surrounding buildings at every window, just waiting to shoot us down."

Benji glances at Central and ponders if now might be a good time to ask her who exactly she is. Now that he thinks about it, he doesn't even know her real name, let alone her background, motives, or relationship with Pomme D'Or. Anyone who has ever known anything about espionage would probably be yelling at Benji to stop being a naive fool, but he can't help but trust her. He supposes it's something about her, the way she seems to trust him so earnestly and volunteered to help save his team without any hesitation, perhaps, or the way she walks or smiles, or some other intangible quality.

Oh, and probably the fact that she's saved his life no less than 4 times by now.

"So what do we do?" Benji asks anxiously. "We can't just drive through, can we?"

Central glares angrily at the screen for several more seconds, and then abruptly moves her chair (and herself) back around to her side.

After downing her coffee in three massive gulps, she sets the cup down and finally says, "we can't go through the actual street. We'll have to sneak by behind the buildings. They'll probably have posted a few guards at the back. If we can take them out, we might be able to get to the building they're being held undetected."

Benji personally thinks she's being a bit too optimistic, but as he has no plan of his own, he only nods in reluctant agreement.

"And once we're there at the building? How are we going to rescue them?" Benji asks, even as he racks his own mind for any good ideas it might eventually decide to have.

Central grimaces, her lips twitching upward into a grim, humorless smile. "That's the question of the day, isn't it."

"We don't have much information," Benji admits gloomily. "Very few tools. And only two people. We are, perhaps, a bit under-prepared for this."

"Hey," she says with sudden humor, "maybe we can just crash a car into one of the walls and go Rambo on everyone inside."

"Don't joke about that," Benji admonishes her lightly. "You sound like how I imagine Ethan would if he didn't try to be so frustratingly mysterious all the time."

Central's grin turns more genuine. "Has Ethan ever crashed a car into the side of a building before?" she inquires curiously.

"No," Benji says immediately as if it were his duty to protect Ethan's reputation, then pauses. "Well," he adds, "he has crashed a car, er, as it were, into the ground before."

Central squints at Benji. "How do you crash a car into the ground?"

"It's a very, very long story," Benji states fondly. "But suffice it to say, Ethan always finds a way to do some crazy stunt on every mission."

He leans forward and regards the image on the laptop forlornly. He murmurs, "I bet if he were here, he would know exactly what to do."

Central sighs in solidarity.

"Well," she says eventually, "we'll have to make do with what we have."

"We don't have anything, really," Benji replies. "Just a map and two guns." He looks down at his pocket, patting it regretfully as he mourns the loss of his car override capsule and automatic lock-pick, which he guesses were confiscated as well when he was kidnapped. Then, suddenly, with an almost visible jump, Benji espies a bump in his sock.

"Oh, really?" Benji mutters in clear exasperation, bending down and extracting something from his leg.

"What is it?" Central questions, unable to keep out a slight eagerness at the thought that he might have had some epiphany.

Benji comes back up flourishing a tiny little metallic object domed on one side and flat on the other. He can tell from her expression that she greatly struggles to suppress a groan of disappointment.

"It was here all along," he mutters. "I thought they had stolen it."

"Benji," Central deadpans. "What is it."

"My, er, manual car override capsule. I just-" he outstretches the capsule in one hand and makes a sharp popping noise "-attach it to any car door and it automatically unlocks it and starts the engine. Amazing, the things our tech division comes up with these days. I guess I had the foresight to hide it after my escape from the motel." He smiles slightly, vaguely pleased with himself. "So, we've got a car override capsule now. Good, great, really. Lots of things to do. With car override capsules. Well, one thing only, really."

Central seems initially unsure as to what to do with this information, but as Benji hurries to hide the capsule in his pocket lest someone see it and become suspicious, her expression slowly turns from bewildered to thoughtful, then to inquisitive, and finally to content.

"You know," she says meditatively, "I think I saw a parking garage around Drenchwood Street. Just brimming with cars, I imagine, from all of the goons."

"Er," he begins as his fingers re-assume their position on the keyboard, briefly typing in a command and bringing up a more zoomed-out image still centered on 3320 Drenchwood Street. There is indeed a large parking complex adjacent to it.

"Yeah," he says, bemused and slightly weary, "there's one very close by. Why?"

Central, in a way reminiscent to Ethan, merely leans in and grins triumphantly. However, there is still an element of uncertainty lurking within her eyes, a lack of experience that prevents her from fully believing in her plan. Benji is almost glad for it - perhaps Ethan has the background, skills, and luck to back it up, but with anyone else it would unnerve him if they wholeheartedly believed in themselves.

None of this is to say, however, that she doesn't appear to be mostly sure of whatever certifiably insane and reckless plan she's come up with as she stands up, throws her cup in a nearby bin, and turns to Benji with a slight quirk of her lips.

"Come on, Benji," she says, tilting her head towards the door. "We've got a team to rescue."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ethan shows up... relatively soon.


	6. Side: The Ambush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've called this a side story mostly because it's not from Benji's perspective and it's also one of the shortest chapters of this fic. However, it is highly recommended that you read it if you are genuinely interested in the story, and it does fit chronologically into the story exactly where it is positioned. It also offers more insight into how Pomme D'Or operates.

The plan had been simple. "Shoot at the right things," their leader had said. Right after they had been recruited, they'd been led through a brief training course that involved pointing at improvised targets and shooting at them with assault rifles. They had then been assigned their roles, which were uniformly to sit beside a window and await the signal. As soon as a car drove past, they were to point, pull the trigger until the clip ran out, reload, and continue firing until the car went out of the sight.

Somewhere, deep inside him, Jake knows he's being mocked.

It's an easy job for a lot of money, and Jake is just shrewd enough to recognize how suspicious that is. He'd been paid half up front (and considering half had been 5000 dollars, of course he had accepted the offer) and told he would receive the next half once the job was done.

Now, as he leans against the bare concrete wall, staring out his window as the other men on the floor do the same with their own respective windows, he has to wonder if any of it is true. No organization in the world could possibly waste so much money on people who have never handled a gun before in their life. Jake had initially rationalized it as desperation - perhaps their operation (and he tries his best to ignore what exactly he means by "their," because whoever they are, they are paying him an ungodly sum to shoot at a car and that is all he needed to know) turned out to require more men than they had anticipated and they had turned to locals without any other options to consider.

Or, perhaps, they had hired untrained strangers because of how expendable they are. Jake's grip on his rifle tightens at the thought.

The whistle pierces the silence and all of the men, almost as one, lift their rifles onto the ledge and position them to aim at the street. A bead of cold sweat runs down Jake's forehead.

He had been positioned at one of the inner buildings, so his gaze is slightly relaxed as he scans the street for any incoming cars. His plan wholly consists of shooting at the tires and doors until the car either stops or passes by. 10,000 dollars is a lot, but, Jake had decided when he had first been approached, not enough to end another person's life.

About a half-minute passes in tense quiet. Then, suddenly, to the left of him, there is an outburst of gunfire. He can hear the bullets darting through the air, shattering glass, piercing into metal and asphalt and stirring up a large dust cloud. He brings his head over his rifle and peers intently into the street, unsure if he even wants the car to get to his sector. Shooting during training was fine, but they had been firing at dummies, bottles, and empty (at least, he thinks they were empty) crates. His grip wavers as he realizes that he's now going to be firing at real, live people, just like him and his family and friends.

The car drifts at a slight angle into Jake's view before he can further ponder his decision to accept this job. His finger squeezes against the trigger clammily, and he nervously glances around to see if the other men have seen the car. Perhaps he can just pretend to fire while the others actually-

The man at the window adjacent to his turns his head and glares at Jake, and before he can hesitate further, he's shooting recklessly in the general direction of the car. It's almost surreal, the way the clatter of his rifle coincides with the appearance of small, disfigured holes in the road and car in front of him. The car seems to leave behind a trail of destruction in its wake, a black surface riddled with small depressions and cavities slightly obscured by an increasingly opaque brown cloud. For only a moment, Jake allows himself a break, and in that moment, he notices something strange about the car, something that he probably wouldn't have noticed in the shooting mania. It's not just the linear motion, as if the driver had just slightly stepped on the accelerator pedal and led nature take its course. It's the way the windows seem blocked by more than glare and his elevated angle, like they were being covered from the inside by thick, heavy cloth.

This time, Jake angles his rifle towards the windows and focuses on observing how the bullets pierce the glass. The passenger's side window is quickly dissolved into tiny fragments, and underneath, Jake can just see a white towel flapping raggedly, torn asunder by a flurry of bullets but still managing to mostly conceal the interior of the car from Jake's view.

"Guys!" Jake roars out, trying to emphasize his agitation and minimize the surprising relief that he feels washing over him at his revelation. "Stop!"

Only one man, the same man who glared at him before, heeds his call. He takes his finger off the trigger and fixes Jake with a questioning (though, with this man, Jake would call it interrogative) look.

"There's no one in the car!" Jake shouts. "It was a decoy!"

This time, all of the men stop shooting, and they take a second to look over the edge of their shattered windows and squint at the car, which has, at this point, begun to slow down, its bullet-filled tires struggling limply against the ground.

"Crap," one of the men - the leader of their little ragtag squad - mutters. He quickly pulls out a radio from his back.

"George, do you copy?" he asks nervously into the radio. "George, please-"

He is met with static that fills the entire room with its disorganized, chaotic sound.

"Guys!" he yells, his eyes filled with panic and fear. "Come with me!" As if to emphasize this order, he hurriedly waves a hand over to the door to their room before rushing over, rifle tucked comfortably into the crook of his elbow.

The leader takes to repeating "crap" over and over again in a hushed tone as he leads the group down the stairs and to the back door, which he proceeds to shove open, bursting into the open with his rifle up and propped onto his shoulder.

Jake is near the back of the corridor when the leader's voice echoes down the hall, a "Freeze!" punctuated by the cacophonous snap of an assault rifle firing.

By the time he's made it to the door, the group has stopped firing, though their guns remain pointed up and at the building to their left.

The leader curses this time, rather colorfully as well, and he makes as if to follow them when the radio on his hip bursts to life, emitting a tiny crackle before a voice calmly pronounces, "Leader Smith, we will take it from here."

If he seemed afraid before, the leader is positively terrified now. His face blanches in the sharp sunlight of afternoon.

"O-of course, sir," he stutters out obsequiously. "Should I do it then, s-sir?"

"A leader should never ask," the voice replies with a hint of irritation. "A leader must do, or he was never an actual leader."

"Yes, sir," the leader says. The radio silences, and as he stands there, hunched up and stiff, he turns to his men with an expression of anxious regret. He almost seems sorrowful as he re-situates the rifle in his arm and fires at the first man in front of him.

Jake saw a gun for the first time in his life three days ago. Now, as the man collapses onto his side, his arms loosely lying on the cement ground, Jake sees his first death.

It was foolish, Jake thinks as the two remaining men, excluding himself, scatter hastily. It was foolish to ever think it would amount to more than this.

Blood seeps out of the wound in the dead man's forehead. Jake takes one step forward, numb and shocked, and stares at it, watches it as it trickles down his head and drips onto the ground.

There is the sound of more gunfire, and, faintly, Jake can make out two dull thuds on either side of him. He had always envisioned death to be how it was in a dramatic play. He thought that each death would receive in its own little scene, with dialogue and music to accompany it and give true weight to the loss of life the audience was glumly witnessing (though he had also always imagined death as some slow fading from consciousness due to old age rather than murder). Truthfully, he had thought his own death would be some drawn-out, emotional affair, with hand-holding and confessions and everything. Instead, as he raises his head from the bleeding corpse and gazes at the leader and his trembling hands, he realizes too late that he had never been fortunate enough to have such an end. His own demise, he thinks, will be rather brief and free of drama. It will be a single shot.

So, at the very least, he doesn't try to resist. His legs feel no impulse to move as he gazes at the leader.

"What was it for?" he hears himself murmur quietly. "What are we dying for?"

The leader smirks bitterly and aligns the barrel to face Jake's forehead. "The cause."


	7. Traps and Reunions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The writing becomes a bit clunky during the spinning-room section simply because there's only so many ways you can describe a room that spins, so I apologize for that, though I certainly don't apologize for way in which they escape it.

"It worked," Benji huffs out as Central shuts the door behind them. "I cannot believe that actually worked."

Central glances over her shoulder and gives Benji a dirty look. "Are you in the habit of participating in plans you don't think will work?"

Benji gives Central an incredulous look, then laughs. "Are you kidding? That's my full-time job."

Having spent some time in tense silence, constantly wondering when they would be found out, crouching beneath dumpsters and trash cans and knocking hapless men out, followed by the sudden adrenaline-filled escape to this building they're in now, Benji is about ready to collapse onto the floor for another few minutes. However, the room they've found themselves in is dark, damp, and completely unknown, and as Benji considers the challenge in front of them, a spike of fear keeps him standing and alert. His eyes dart around naturally for any incoming fears.

"Right," he says after a second, "we should get going then.”

Central nods reluctantly and begins making her way through the room. Benji creeps along by her side and tries not to make his fear too obvious. Their shoes splash in small puddles on the floor, and their journey to the other end of the room is accompanied by the faint dripping of some liquid (water, Benji hopes and presumes).

As she sets her hand on the door to the adjacent room, she looks to Benji. He gulps, but pulls the assault rifle out from his side and holds it close to her hand as she swings the door wide open.

Luckily (or perhaps not, the lack of guards is making Benji a bit nervous to be honest), there isn’t anyone in the next room either. As Benji sweeps into the room and scans it with his rifle at the ready, Central suddenly stills, and Benji manages to just before his foot makes contact with a nearly invisible string stretched taut over the length of the room.

“Step away,” Central commands urgently, and Benji eagerly complies. She procures a flashlight she grabbed off one of the men from her back (a bit belatedly, in Benji’s opinion) and shines it around the room. Three more strings glint dangerously in the white glare.

“That’s not good,” Benji mutters absently as he contemplates a safe route to the other side.

Central glances around the room with her flashlight, but there doesn’t seem to be anything but dull gray walls and a somehow grayer floor and ceiling. Benji is beginning to get the impression that Pomme D’Or must really love gray.

“What is the trap?” she wonders out loud. “And how did they manage to hide four of them in this one room?”

“Is now really the time to be asking that?” Benji hisses. “We should just-“

And then, finally, a person appears. The door in front of them, taunting them cruelly to approach, opens silently, and from behind it steps out a medium-sized man in a probably very expensive suit.

“Hello,” he says rather pleasantly. “You two must be the ones who have been causing me so much trouble lately.” He turns to Benji, who promptly freezes in terror. Though he can’t be sure who this strange man is, he has a pretty good idea.

He remarks, “Benji Dunn. Come to save your friends, have you? Are you sure you’re not too late?” He smirks smugly at Benji’s expression, which has transformed into something between fear and uncertainty.

“The document-“ he begins helplessly.

“-is false,” the man completes. “Absolutely no details contained therein are true. Including the time of your team’s execution.”

“Hey, that’s not true,” Central points out. “It was telling the truth when it said they were getting executed, wasn’t it? Or aren’t they?”

The man’s face twists into something much more unpleasant as he addresses Central. “Ah, you,” he annunciates with disgust. “You go by ‘Central’ these days, don’t you? A foolish name for a foolish woman.”

Central herself looks suddenly very irritated to be in this man’s presence, and Benji guesses it’s not just because of the insult.

“Not any better than ‘Ambrosia,’” she counters. “I guess we must both be idiots. Perhaps you might even be stupid enough to actually go through with executing his team, which would undoubtedly make you enemy number one of the IMF.”

The man scowls at Central. “We are being hunted down either way, and I will not back down from a secret organization so vain as to call themselves the ‘Impossible Mission Force’ when we are so close to attaining our dream.”

Central’s countenance briefly flickers to something other than anger, but it snaps back before Benji can even recognize what it was.

“Close?” she asks. “I don’t see how you’re any closer to your so-called ‘dream’ than you were a decade earlier.”

The man appears unfazed by her comment. He simply says, “We’ve made more progress than you’d like to think.”

He steps forward once, and Benji instinctively takes a step back even as Central holds her ground and his mocking gaze.

“In just a few hours, we will have control of the most technologically advanced piece of weaponry that has ever existed,” he continues. Benji suddenly remembers the original reason he and his team had come to this small town – to prevent a trade between Pomme D’Or and a nefarious third party. Benji had managed to get away with the microchip, which he later theorized contained the decryption algorithm necessary to use the other object involved in the trade. He forces himself to recall that night, and though his mind naturally focuses on the panic coursing through his veins, the desperate shouts from Ethan to survive, he also realizes there was something else the Pomme D’Or operatives were towing along – the metal briefcase, and the primary object of interest in the trade.

He resists the urge to curse, instead interrupting the man’s annoyingly superior monologue with a “he’s right.”

“Probably,” he adds hastily as Central turns to fix her angry glare on him. “They definitely got some kind of important object last night.”

“Yes, you were there,” the man says. “You were there when my team apprehended the great Ethan Hunt and most of his team and made away with the package.” He leans in slightly. “And all without paying a single cent.”

He pauses for a moment as if to impress upon them the significance of this statement. “Allow me to pose a question. Your team, with the depth and quality of their resources, with the skills and experience of years, perhaps decades, of experience, with days or weeks of planning and preparation, were unable to stop a mere trade. How exactly do you think the two of you will manage to free them? You have two guns, some inane device that lets you steal cars, and, between the two of you, an astounding lack of sense or competency. It was through luck alone that you managed to get as far as this.” He finishes with, “and believe me, you will get no further.”

Central, despite her volatility regarding ownership of money, seems thankfully unaffected by his speech. She regards him with caution and curiosity but, Benji realizes gladly, very little fear. He feels his own terror abate a little, his limbs becoming a little less resistant to motion.

“And how are you going to stop us?” she taunts in return. “You don’t seem to have a gun, and you certainly wouldn’t have enough time to take one out and fire at us before Benji kills you.” Benji stares at the man in what he hopes is a very threatening way as he holds the rifle steady, pointing squarely at the man’s oblong face.

“Your first option,” she continues, “is to set off a trap and hope our panic and confusion grants you enough time to escape. Of course, Benji will shoot you dead the second you try anything, so I’m guessing you won’t try that. If you planned beforehand, you might have contacted men to ambush us from behind while you kept us occupied, but I’m willing to bet you haven’t done that. You want to do this job yourself. So how are you going to kill us? What would allow you to eliminate us without risking yourself?”

The man responds within a second of her question, saying, “it’s simple. Even if our initial plan didn’t work and you fools actually managed to notice the wires, we could still exploit your sheer lack of preparation.”

He points at Benji, or, more precisely, his rifle. “We have safeguards against every possibility, including betrayal. The man you stole that from? He was given that gun by us. It has an electronic switch that triggers a tiny explosion inside, rendering the gun useless.

“That switch-“ he grins maliciously “-has already been activated.” He begins walking to the closest wire, arm oustretched.

“Benji, do it!” Central screams as she twists around to detach the sniper rifle from its strap on her back.

Benji winces but obeys, pressing down on the trigger and hunching his shoulders to receive the recoil. The rifle gives a little rumble as if it were an engine, then goes silent just as quickly.

“Huh,” he says, perhaps a little dismayed by this entire situation, but then he notices the man not a feet away from a wire and his mind panics.

He grabs his rifle and lobs it at the second closest wire before he can even comprehend what he wants to happen, praying that this is the one time luck is on his side. The rifle catches on the wire, hangs there for a second, then falls to the ground as the wire snaps soundly in half with a twang.

The man curses loudly, then sprints back to the door through which he came and tugs vainly at the knob. It doesn’t budge even slightly.

The room shakes, and just for a moment, Benji stands stock-still as he remembers the last time he felt such a rumble. He recalls two agents, standing in the middle of a gray room much like this one, committing themselves to death for the sake of their friends and family. He recalls bone crunching and the whistle of air as he leapt down with Central just moments before the room completely shut.

The difference here is that there is no escape. He turns around and sees the door they came through suddenly shut, and he doesn’t need to go and try to open it to know that there is no longer any exit from this room.

“You bastard!” the man shouts, his façade of politeness and calm quickly discarded in his fury. “You’ve doomed us all!”

Benji prepares to see the ceiling and floor close in on him, prepares to be crushed to death and to die without even having saved his friends (not that he thinks there’s a way to prepare for that, but he tries). But the room doesn’t compress as it did before. Instead, as he suddenly finds himself struggling to stay upright, he realizes that the ceiling is suddenly much more alike to a wall than it was before and that he himself is sliding down the floor, landing unsteadily on the wooden door as the ceiling begins to rotate towards him.

Central tumbles down next to him, sniper rifle still out and pointed at the man, who is clawing desperately at the floor turned wall as he slides towards them.

“What kind of trap is this!?” she shouts, her voice a mix of panic and utter confusion. “How was this ever going to kill us?”

The ceiling-turned-floor makes contact with their backs, and now, suddenly, they’re lying on the floor. The man quickly pulls himself up and sprints to the other side of the rotating room, deftly dodging the other wires in an impressive show of agility.

“It wasn’t!” the man yells back. “Our trapmaster, he’s…” he pauses for a second, and his panic quickly turns to desperate rage. “Screw it, I’m dead anyhow, he’s a goddamned freak! He designs these stupid rooms and installs these nano-cameras to observe how the people inside react! Everyone’s a guinea pig to him, even his allies!”

The room twists back to its original orientation, and Central and Benji skid down the sudden incline, making sure to duck underneath the wires, while the man stays flush to the wall.

“This isn’t going to work!” Central says finally. “One of us is eventually going to slip up and trip one of the wires!”

“The one I was going for releases knockout gas!” the man roars, any hesitation he might have had about assisting his enemy gone at this point. “The one right next to that causes the room to descend like an elevator into the basement!”

As the room revolves to make the ceiling the new floor once more, Central pivots around and falls gracefully on both feet. Benji, slightly less elegantly, twists his body and lets his shoulder absorb the impact as he lands. The man crouches down and presses his head to the ceiling-made-floor, allowing it to naturally carry him with the rotation.

“The last one triggers a mechanism that switches the walls out with very sharp spikes! It’s, uh, best paired with the rotating room!” the man finishes.

“I’ll admit,” Benji shouts over the shaking and groans of the room, “I do regret tripping that wire now. This is-“ He presses himself flat to the wall that’s soon to be a floor and lets himself slide down to the other side belly-down, a bit like a penguin only with much more screeching.

“It’s much worse than gas,” he says. “I think I would have preferred that.”

Central slips down the next sudden incline on her back, a few strands of hair making contact with a wire above her as she goes. “There’s nothing to do about it now,” she shouts with reassuring calm. “We need to-“

The assault rifle falls down as the room rotates and smacks Central directly in the face. Benji almost remarks at how lucky they are, in a sense, that it hasn’t tripped another wire already, before deciding that that might not be the best thing to say at the moment. The man makes a slight wincing sound as the sharp sound of metal impacting flesh echoes across the room, but as she extracts the gun with the hand not holding her sniper rifle, she seems almost glad.

She mutters something too quietly to hear under the constant rumble of the room, but Benji swears he hears her says something about spiked walls. The room makes another revolution as the three of them scramble to avoid the wires, and she stays silent.

“Central,” Benji says finally, “please tell me you’ve come up with a plan.”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” she replies triumphantly, a genuine grin on her face. Benji lets a slight smile slip onto his face as well, until she turns her attention to the assault rifle, quickly unloading it of all of its ammo and tossing it in Benji’s general direction. He manages to grasp it with a few fingers as they slide down the room once more.

Both Benji and the man watch in horrified fascination as Central pours the ammo into her pocket, takes one out, and attempts to separate the bullet and casing.

“What are you bloody doing!?” Benji yells, making no attempt to hide the desperation and confusion in his voice. At this point, he’s a bit too worried about surviving to even consider his duty as an IMF agent to maintain decorum and appear professional.

“The plan,” she replies, shaking out the gunpowder and shoving it into her coat pocket.

Benji, as preoccupied as he is being confused by Central, doesn’t notice the next slope, and as he slips down, one errant hand catches on a string momentarily and snaps it. For one second, save for the shaking of the room, everything is silent, and then the room is suddenly descending as it continues to rotate.

“What happened!?” Central asks anxiously as the floor beneath her slowly drops. Her hands, however, continue their disassembly of the rifle ammo. “Is the room moving down?”

“I tripped a wire!” Benji admits. “At least it wasn’t the spiked walls, I suppose?”

“Like this is any better!” the man screams angrily, his face red from the combined exertion of shouting and running around the room as it rotates. “As soon as the room makes contact with the basement floor, knockout gas is automatically released and then lit! We’ll all be burnt to near-death!”

“How was I supposed to know that?” Benji protests. “Who comes up with these things!?”

The man opens his mouth, probably to insult Benji, when Central urgently shouts, “how long? How long until it reaches the bottom?”

The man stays quiet for a moment, then, as they all struggle to stay standing as the ceiling-floor rotates counter-clockwise, finally says, “I’d say we have a minute at best.”

“That’s all the time I need,” Central says with some confidence, though her face is now an unchanging scowl. For a moment, Benji feels an overwhelming guilt that settles heavily in his stomach like a sharp stone, and he wonders if Central wouldn’t have been better off doing this alone. Then, he’s crashing down another shifting slant and any other negative emotions he might have been feeling are quickly discarded in favor of pure panic.

As the room continues to flip and flip, Benji becomes almost accustomed to the motion. His feet position themselves almost naturally as he goes down the slopes, and he almost unconsciously moves to retain as much control as he can in this spinning room. Central seems to follow his lead, her eyes still trained on her hands as they efficiently pluck apart bullets and pour the gunpowder into her pocket.

10 more seconds pass. Despite Benji’s silent resolution to not bother Central too much during this apparently essential phase of her plan, he can’t help but yell, “Central, status?” as they press their sides against the wall and let it carry them up as the new floor.

“Working on it!” she calls back. Her hands fumble with the next bullet, and before she can successfully pull it apart, it’s clattering to the ground. Her expression doesn’t shift at all as she pulls out the next bullet and repeats the process, this time successfully.

Benji feels more and more nauseous the longer he spends in this room, and he can tell from the man’s pinched face and Central’s disquieted countenance that they feel similarly. As he navigates through the room, he stares absently at Central. His mind seems to accidentally stumble upon the plan she probably came up with two minutes ago.

“No,” he says automatically. “Absolutely not. That isn’t just insane, it is-“

“It’s our only option,” Central retorts, and though Benji is almost certain there are other options, his mind can’t come up with a single one. “Do you want to be burnt to death?”

“I certainly don’t want to be exploded to death!” Benji shouts, his voice naturally raising as he narrowly ducks his head under a wire. “So just-“

“Done,” Central interrupts with relief evident in her voice.

“I’d estimate about 15 seconds until we reach the ground,” the man reports, his voice wavering with anxiety and fear.

As they slide down the floor, Central points at the wire furthest from them (that hasn’t been snapped, Benji notes guiltily) and yells, “that one! That’s the knockout gas, right!?”

The man glances around the room as if to ascertain their current orientation, then turns back and nods his head uncertainly.

Central roughly tears off a piece of her undershirt and stuffs it into her coat pocket with the gunpowder. When, a second later, she brings it out, Benji can catch a glimpse of black powder before she’s enclosing and wrapping it in a little bag. She shoves her other hand in her other coat pocket and procures a lighter, and the man’s eyes widen visibly as he finally realizes what exactly her plan is.

“I’m going to toss this bag down with this lighter the next time this room is angled downward!” she shouts quickly. “We’ll all grab the knockout gas wire at the same time and hang until the explosion happens! Then-“

The right side of the room tilts downward and Central falters as they all begin to slip down. With controlled haste, she flicks on a fire with the lighter, throws the pouch at the wooden door on the other side of them, then quickly tosses her lit lighter after it. By sheer luck (or perhaps not, Benji doesn’t care much as he focuses intently on the wire in front of them), the tiny, flickering fire makes contact with the gunpowder bag, and the fire quickly spreads to encompass the entire exterior. The bag lands with a slight thump onto the center of the door.

As one, they slide down, and Benji outstretches his hand to catch the wire. The perpetual pit in his stomach grows somehow deeper as he stares down at the lit bag. So much of his career, he realizes, so much of his survival these days, is dependent on luck alone. One day he’ll run out of luck and die, and he’s aware that he risks his life daily for a good cause and that he’s doubtlessly saved at least a few lives in his career as an IMF agent, but he can’t help but wonder if it’s the fate of every secret spy to meet their untimely doom in some unknown location at the hands of some nefarious, nebulous organization. He hadn’t ever considered retirement, but perhaps-

His train of thought instantaneously halts as he notices the painful digging of metal wire into the palm of his hand. With another pitiful twang, the string snaps in half, with Benji and Central hanging on one half and the man on the other. Benji grunts as he tightens his painful grip on the string and swings counter-clockwise into the wall, Central hanging on just above him.

Large rectangular regions of the walls recede into a black nothingness with a robotic whirl, and pink gas quickly diffuses into the room. Benji prays it’s fatigue he’s feeling as his grasp on the wire loosens slightly and he feels, for the first time in a few hours, the lethargy from an overly eventful day.

The bag bursts with a raucous boom, smoke and grains of gunpowder propelling outward and all over the room. Benji can feel the force of the gale as it flattens his hair, his ears ringing with the force of the explosion, his arms slackening against the wire instinctively in a mix of apprehension and relief.

“Now!” Central roars, though her voice is muffled and distorted through the disorienting pounding that seems to encompass Benji’s entire head and the intense bout of tinnitus.

Benji, his mind swirling with unspoken fears and emotions, yelps as he fully releases the wire and falls down nearly into the air. His movements suddenly seem wild and uncontrollable, but he manages to retain enough of a hold on the floor (which, at this point, is essentially a wall) to steer himself hastily into the middle. He can hear himself shouting in terror as he hurtles down into the smoke of gray, opaque clouds from the explosion. For a moment, his vision is completely obscured, but he can barely process it before his feet crash against the remnants of the bottom half of the door, breaking it off with a sharp crack that Benji desperately hopes, as pain lances up his leg, is only from the door snapping.

As he takes his frighteningly vertical leave from the room, the descent is disturbingly brief. Within a second of leaving the smoke cloud, his body is slamming against a ground comforting in its static nature, and he wisely ignores the pain coursing through his entire body for the second it takes him to scramble vaguely away from the shadow above him. Central careens out of the room right after him, a slight depression forming in the mass of smoke behind her, her brown hair spreading out behind her like tendrils as she lands firmly on her feet and rolls out of the way of the descending room. The man comes out next, and Benji feels gratified in his own landing as he tumbles onto his side and barely rolls out of the way of the room as it lands with a resounding thunder onto the pure white floor.

Benji flinches and shields his face instinctively with a hand as the inside of the room lights up instantaneously in an intensely bright orange-red fire. It bursts out of the opening in the door, a shock of combustion that heats up Benji’s crouching form to an uncomfortable degree before receding back to the room.

Benji takes a moment to recuperate before placing his hand back at his side, standing up, and surveying the room. He notes the clinical white floor that seems to expand in every direction for miles, the looming gray walls that rise up into the darkness above, and then he notices nothing but the man several meters in front of him, his hair matted with blood, his body covered with bruises, his hands bound firmly against his back, and, against all odds, a slight grin on his face.

“Benji?” he says disbelievingly, and if it weren’t the overwhelming flood of relief that sweeps over Benji like a tsunami, he would have half a mind to be offended by the incredulity in his voice.

“Ethan,” Benji breathes out. It isn’t a question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it finally happens! Astounding, it only took around 30,000 words for the main pairing of this fic to actually reunite!
> 
> On an unrelated note, the Pomme D'Or agent introduced in this chapter becomes an essential part of the story. I did not plan for this, but it is convenient to have a person with actual funds and knowledge regarding the big bad criminal organization of the plot.


	8. Past: Therapy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These relatively brief looks into the recent past are my way of expounding further on Benji's character and his relationship with Ethan without detracting or digressing from the main plot. Technically skippable, but, like with the side stories, I wouldn't recommend it.

**FOUR MONTHS AGO**

Another, less cranky version of Benji might have called it comforting. He might have even referred to it as homely if he were feeling charitable. He would look around that room, at the monotone colors, the gray chairs and sofas, the wooden desk that seemed designed to be as dull as possible, and think that, really, he was lucky to be in the employ of an organization that cared so for its agents’ well-beings.

This version of Benji, however, couldn’t care less about any of that. It seemed that no matter where he directed his view, everything he looked at was suddenly very annoying. He contemplated jumping through the window that divided the room from the similarly bleak hallway and making a break for it, only he knew he was already being considered for suspension. He felt restless, irritated, and nervy. His fingers tapped impatiently on the armrests of his chair. His eyes wandered across the room as if hoping to eventually find some fascinating element he had missed the last 400 times he had examined it.

And the worst thing about it was he knew the man across from him, leaning eagerly from his own chair and peering intently at Benji’s face, was probably noticing all of it and recording it in that infuriating little notebook of his.

No, the worst thing was that he was cognizant of why he was here instead of out in the field. He had been acting out recently. He had begun dozing off during missions due to inexplicable fatigue (or so he told his team and superiors, though perhaps the bags under his eyes were enough to give away his acquired insomnia). He had grown irritable and unstable, reckless and unpredictable. He knew it was a problem, and that it was a miracle none of his team had been seriously injured from his mistakes yet. He just didn’t see how sitting here and talking about it with this strange man in ridiculously large spectacles would help any.

Wasn’t that what all patients said, though? Now that he thought about it, he didn’t think he knew a single person who enjoyed or appreciated therapy. The therapist had told him on the first day, when he had angrily cited Ethan’s lack of sessions as a defense for why he shouldn’t be forced through them either, that Ethan was a special case and a bit of a mental abnormality, and that he had simply been working here for so long that near-death experiences no longer fazed him enough to make him go through therapy after every mission.

Benji wasn’t so sure about that. He was certain, however, that any attempt to get Ethan to go to therapy would undoubtedly result in broken bones and damaged property.

The thing was, he was sure Ethan had his own ways of dealing with the stresses of the job. He personally liked working himself to exhaustion and collapsing into a sleep that, with any luck, wouldn’t contain any horrific nightmares (one could only hope these days). Throughout the many decades since the IMF’s founding, there had been hundreds of agents, perhaps even a few that managed to retire voluntarily. He was willing to bet half his life savings that not even one of those agents had stayed sane through therapy and professional help.

It’s a waste of money, he thought bitterly as he pointedly avoided the therapist’s gaze, and time.

Therapy seemed to him essentially an especially torturous and uncomfortable way to drag out traumatic memories and bring them to the forefront of his mind when he had spent so much time shoving them into the deep, dark recesses from which nothing should come back. However, his persuasive arguments had had no effect on his superiors or even his friends and co-workers. They all seemed perfectly okay with believing that a nice chat with a man who was paid to do it was the way to go about healing and all that.

“Benji,” the therapist said rather loudly, and Benji’s attention snapped reluctantly back to him as he belatedly realized he had begun speaking again (that he had probably been speaking for a minute or two already while Benji lamented his fate). “Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah. Of course.” He nodded his head once and tried not to seem too bemused.

“What did I just say?” The therapist, who insisted he be referred to as “Mike” (though Benji’s personal name for him was Dr. Caterpillar in honor of his bushy mustache), raised one eyebrow smugly. Benji felt the urge to sock him in the face.

“Er-“ he paused for a moment and assumed a thoughtful expression. “Probably something about the healing properties of lavender, I’d think.”

“I was talking about taking these sessions seriously,” the therapist said humorously. “Which you clearly aren’t.”

“Nonsense,” Benji replied dismissively. “I’m hanging onto every word.”

Dr. Caterpillar gave a dramatic sigh and sunk back into his chair. For once, he seemed almost glum, but Benji refused to feel guilty about it. If these sessions were unpleasant for him too, then all he had to do was write Benji a clean bill of health.

And yet, for some vexing reason, he seemed very committed to Benji’s improvement. It frustrated Benji to no end.

“I tried,” he said without any trace of his former cheer and spirit. “I tried the nice, polite approach. I’ve tried it several times to no avail.”

“Maybe you should stop, then,” Benji replied, and he felt something almost like hope soar within him at the thought that he might have actually worn Dr. Caterpillar down.

“You’re right, I will,” the therapist said, but his expression turned fierce instead of resigned. He flipped back several pages in his notebook. “From now on, I’ll just tell you it directly.”

“Go ahead,” Benji said, refusing to be cowed despite the apprehension he felt as the therapist spoke.

Dr. Caterpillar gave him a thin veneer of a smile and began speaking in a dispassionate tone.

“You are clearly suffering from acute insomnia,” he pronounced firmly. “According to reports from your team, you vacillate between despondency and agitation on a regular, almost daily basis. Any mention of the criminal Solomon Lane very quickly worsens your emotional state and behavior.” Benji tensed instinctively at the mention of his name, then forcibly relaxed.

“You have become withdrawn and reclusive. Of the last 24 times your friends have asked you to come out with them, you have rejected the offer 21 times.”

“How do you know that?” Benji interjected indignantly. “The other things might have come from the mission reports, but this-“

“I have asked your team to report to me weekly,” Dr. Caterpillar said smoothly, without a hint of shame or regret. “Seeing as you refuse to speak to me honestly, I thought it imperative that I track your mental health through another way.”

Benji’s stomach churned painfully as he considered this. He felt resentful, irate, betrayed, but, more than anything, guilty. He wondered how it must have felt for his friends to go behind his back and speak to a therapist of all people.

Then, the humiliation set in, and the anger rose back in full force. Well, perhaps he hadn’t been exactly healthy lately, but there really wasn’t an excuse to go speaking to a therapist about one’s friend, was there? Whenever he did something even slightly abnormal, did they think about reporting it to Dr. Caterpillar? Did they file it in some mental filing cabinet with all of the other observations?

“They had no right to do that,” he said crossly.

“They were worried,” Dr. Caterpillar responded simply. “They probably thought it was the best thing they could do, and, of course, they knew you would never condone it if you knew.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Benji said fiercely. “It- it’s an invasion of privacy. Sort of. Well, it’s some sort of invasion, and I don’t appreciate it.”

“I am simply trying to state that, despite all of your claims to the contrary, you are clearly mentally unstable and unfit for the field, so-“

“I don’t think you’d be a good judge of that,” Benji interrupted coldly. “Have you ever been in the field?”

Benji swore the therapist rolled his eyes. “I don’t need to have first-hand knowledge to understand that you cannot function as a field agent of the IMF as you are now.”

Deep down inside him, probably lurking around the same void of darkness as his memories of his abduction, he knew the therapist was right. He recognized that Dr. Caterpillar was correct in implying that his performance had been substandard as of late, and he acknowledged that what his friends had done had been well-intentioned if greatly insulting.

But Benji had an ingrained, entrenched habit of ignoring that part of his mind, so all he consciously registered as Dr. Caterpillar spoke was displeasure, discomfort, and, louder than anything else, rage (coincidentally, as he sometimes was willing to understand, anger was the perfect way to mask guilt and shame). 

“I think I’ll leave now,” he stated shortly. He stood up and headed for the door.

“It won’t get better on its own,” the therapist called. “Ignore it, and it’ll fester like an infected wound with salt and flaming oil rubbed into it.”

Benji turned around to give Dr. Caterpillar a dirty look. “I did not need that image put in my head. And it’s not at all the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Dr. Caterpillar raised his eyebrows suggestively. “You need help, Benji. You can’t treat an infected wound with salt and burning oil in it all by yourself.”

“Will you stop?” Benji asked, unable to keep the humor out of his voice. “That must be the strangest metaphor I’ve ever heard.”

The therapist grinned, and it even seemed half-genuine. A moment passed in silence. Benji hesitantly twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open.

“I’ll see you next week,” Dr. Caterpillar said, and his voice was pleasant and polite again. Benji couldn’t say if he preferred it to the emotionless, matter-of-fact demeanor he had assumed before.

“Alright,” he responded reluctantly, stepping into the hallway and quickly closing the door before Dr. Caterpillar could think of another strange analogy to tell.

He only made it halfway there to his desk before Brandt stepped out of a conference room full of disgruntled bureaucrats in black suits with a strained smile on his face.

“How did it go?” he asked conversationally, though Benji supposed he knew better now.

“Fine,” he answered briefly. Then, before Brandt could say anything more, he glanced at the room from which he had stepped out and asked, “you in a meeting?”

Brandt didn’t seem especially affected by the sudden change in topic. He replied, “Yeah. Quarterly expenses report. Basically a grilling on why every mission with Hunt ends up costing 300 percent more than it was predicted to.”

Benji laughed. “It’s a wonder the IMF hasn’t declared bankruptcy yet.”

“Believe me,” Brandt said dryly, “it’s gotten close to being disbanded for that. The government’s only willing to allocate more money because we’ve saved the world several times over, and even then, as you can probably see in there, they’re not very pleased about it.”

“Well, good luck,” Benji said lightly. “It’d be a pity if Ethan couldn’t crash any more planes.”

Brandt snorted and turned around slowly. “If you see him,” he added, “tell him to consider cutting back on the suicidal stunts.” Before Benji could respond, he stepped back into the room, an expression of firm resolve on his face.

“Will do,” Benji shouted back anyway, the awkwardness almost tangible in his voice.

He lingered for a few more seconds, watching as Brandt proceeded to the front of the room, planted his hands on the table, and, with gritted teeth, began saying something quietly. Benji, who had never mastered the art of lip-reading as Ethan had, could only infer he was speaking about why the IMF was an essential part of national security and shouldn’t be disbanded just because it had to cover up the occasional exploded building.

He felt a smile tugging on his lips as he walked down the blank steel hallway. He passed rooms filled with agents focused on blue-lit screens, an infirmary with a man limping around with crutches and a stump for a right leg, and dozens more obscured by one-way glass or otherwise a complete lack of windows. It was, upon further reflection, a rather strange workplace, but after over a decade there he had become accustomed to it all as much as one could be accustomed to the IMF.

He halted at a door and slid his keycard into the reader, which had been installed where a doorknob usually was. He stepped into the room, taking a moment to relish the tranquil atmosphere so starkly different from the rest of the headquarters. Initially, he had been somewhat dismayed to learn he had been moved to a separate office having spent much of his professional career in a shared workspace where there was always motion, conversation, and a faint air of panic hanging over everyone, but he had come to appreciate the peace and quiet. And besides that, he rarely spent much time there.

He walked over to his desk and flopped into the chair, giving himself a minute to simply rest. He recalled that, before the IMF, his life had been full of moments to rest. He had had a stable, safe job (albeit as a software engineer), and he’d gone home every day and eaten dinner and went to sleep like most adults did. Now, he was lucky to be allowed even three days at home without some assignment whisking him off to another part of the world.

For one blissful minute or so, his mind perfectly matched the tranquility of his office. Then, unbidden and unwanted, memories of the therapy sessions and all the sessions before came to his mind, and he glared down at the desk as if demanding a distraction from it.

The distraction came instead from the door as several knocks emanated sharply from it. Benji snapped his head up and shouted a hopeful “come in.”

Ethan slid through the door and closed it in that very strange way he did that prevented it from creaking. Sometimes, though Benji was sure they had gone through the same training, he wondered if Ethan didn’t know at least twice as much as he did about the art of espionage.

Well, Benji thought wryly, he’s certainly worth more than two of me. It shouldn’t be a surprise if his skillset reflects that.

“Benji,” Ethan greeted politely, and Benji felt slightly humiliated that that alone was enough to make him feel warm and fuzzy inside. “How was it?”

Benji smiled as he pivoted his chair lazily to face Ethan. “Oh, you know. Uneventful. Boring.” He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should really say what had happened. It was in Benji’s nature to want to maintain the status quo, and after so many years of struggling to fight against it as an IMF agent, he was beginning to wonder if any of it was really worth it.

“You were in there for a while,” Ethan said. Benji resisted the urge to ask him how he knew that (he had been in that suffocating room for exactly an hour and 12 minutes, though the majority of it was admittedly spent either in silence or drifting off while Dr. Caterpillar told him some inane strategy for managing stress and retaining calm and what not). “Surely you didn’t just sit there.”

There was a question in there, but Benji stubbornly chose to ignore it.

“Perhaps we did,” he said testily. “You weren’t there.”

There was a question in there, but Ethan irritatingly chose to ignore it.

Instead, he only sighed and tilted his head to stare at the ceiling. “Benji,” he said simply, something almost like trepidation in his voice (even though anyone who has ever worked with or heard of Ethan Hunt knows he is immune to such things).

“I know-“ he blurted out. Ethan froze in his seat, and Benji decided that it was probably too late to take it back now.

“I know,” he repeated, but his voice wavered, a flimsy calm bristling underneath a sea of anger and confusion, “that you’ve been speaking with him. The therapist. Reporting my behavior to him every week. Going behind my back-“ his voice raises unconsciously, injected with indignation and anxiety, “-and telling him everything I don’t want him to know. Thank you for that. It’ll probably be another decade or so before they let me back into the field.”

“Benji,” Ethan said again, and Benji hated that he almost relaxed in response to his soothing tone. “You know I won’t let that happen. As soon as I know you’re okay, I’ll speak directly with the secretary-“

“I am okay!” Benji insisted, even as he realized that the agitation clear on his face and in his voice very heavily undermined his point. “And it’s very frustrating to have to keep saying that to the people you thought were your friends!”

“You are not remotely close to okay,” Ethan corrected. “Because if you were, you wouldn’t look like a deer in the headlights whenever I mention Solomon Lane.”

Benji could only conclude his body loathed him with all its being as he felt it stiffen in response to the name. It was ridiculous, honestly. Him, a grown man and, besides that, a full-fledged IMF agent, flinching from a simple name belonging to a man who had been captured and whose forces had been mostly decimated. Admittedly, his experience with Lane hadn’t been the best, consisting mostly of staring up at his terrifying face while he intimated that he was going to exploit Benji to kill Ethan, trying his best not to panic as his cold, ruthless voice echoed down his ear while a bomb dug into his stomach, and, three years after that, engaging him in a life-and-death fight that resulted in Lane hanging Benji and nearly killing him (again). Really, if it had been very recent, Benji would have felt justified in his reaction to Lane’s name. Any normal person would probably do much more embarrassing things upon thinking of the man who had released small pox, destabilized the world order through assassination and mass murder for many years, and almost succeeded in nuking a medical camp set up to treat the aforementioned small pox.

But it had been several months since Lane had been neutralized (for the second and hopefully last time) and Benji still felt shocked with anxiety and terror every time anyone mentioned him. If he had felt ridiculous before, he felt like a veritable clown now, freezing up whenever someone talked about Lane.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” Ethan said, though the steel in his voice had been mostly replaced with worry. Benji ignored the sickly sweet feeling in his gut that arose from that thought.

“Fine,” Benji muttered, “perhaps I’m not okay. But sitting around here all day and doing therapy isn’t going to do anything. I need to move on.” He leaned forward in his seat. “I need to be in the field, Ethan.”

Ethan’s expression flickered uncertainly, and Benji, seeing a chance and praying he wasn’t looking at things wrong, pressed his advantage.

“You should know better than anyone that the worst thing you can do for an agent is take him off the field,” Benji insisted. “Please, Ethan.” And no, he wasn’t above begging, because if he was being honest with himself, sitting here and simply watching while Ethan and his friends risked their lives over and over again was maddening and not at all conducive to a healthy mental state.

Ethan remained silent for several seconds, and Benji worried that, perhaps, he had said the wrong thing. His worry, however, was matched by conviction and anger, because really, how ridiculous was it that he had to beg someone to let him do field work again? He was perfectly capable of making decisions by himself, so why did it seem like everyone he knew was so determined to take the right of choice away from him? What did it matter if he was unnecessarily endangering his life if it was his life to endanger? And he would work on it, of course, to the point where he stopped being a hindrance to the team, but beyond that – well, again, he was his own person, wasn’t he?

“I’ll think about it,” Ethan said finally, rising quickly from his seat.

“That’s all I can ask you to do,” Benji replied, unable to keep some satisfaction from coating his words.

And he departed, pausing to glance once at Benji with an inscrutable look on his face while Benji did his best not to stare at his butt.

The door shut with a click and a slight beep, leaving Benji alone in his bare office.

One week later, Brandt stopped by to inform him the board had approved him for field duty once more. Benji hadn’t even tried to hide his relief as he jumped up from his seat and hugged Brandt gratefully, mentally noting to thank Ethan when he saw him again. And whenever he traversed that hallway again, he made sure to keep his gaze down and straight at the floor as he passed Dr. Caterpillar’s office.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Caterpillar will very likely only be mentioned in future chapters, because I don't intend to write any more about Benji in therapy (it was, as expected, kind of boring).


	9. Fights and Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ethan finally joins the party! Just another 4 million words before they kiss!

**THE PRESENT**

Benji’s feet push him up automatically from the floor. His focus narrows to Ethan and Ethan alone, and he’s a second away from sprinting to him when Central’s arm swings into view and obscures his path.

“Wait,” she says simply. Benji has enough self-control to not shove past her and immediately go for Ethan again. Even as his brain screams at him to run and save him right this instant, he forces himself to take a moment to survey his surroundings more closely.

As far as he can tell, aside from him, Central, Ethan, and the Pomme D’Or agent (who is still lying on the floor and seems content to continue to do so for the foreseeable future), there is no one else in this massive white chamber. Behind him, a large steel panel reminiscent of a garage door is embedded into a wall, a tiny verification device of some type with a card slot to its left. Other than that, Benji sees no other exits and, besides that, no other distinguishing features.

“I don’t see any traps,” Benji points out.

Central raises one eyebrow. “Wires, pressure plates, lasers, motion detectors-“

“You don’t have to worry about that,” the Pomme D’Or agent interrupts. “They put all the traps in the room we just escaped from. I’m pretty sure they ran out of funds after that.”

“That’s a first,” Benji comments wryly. “A secret criminal organization without practically unlimited funds? I’m astounded.”

The agent scowls. “We’re not a criminal organization.”

“Really?” Central says. “Because it seems to me like most of what you guys do is illegal.”

“Well, that’s different,” the agent protested weakly. “We have a goal. We have a structure. We’re not a bunch of two-timing thugs who commit crimes to satiate our bloodthirst.”

“It’s still criminal,” Central argues. “Just more sophisticated.”

“Guys,” Benji interjects loudly, “could we save the arguing for later?” He nods his head at Ethan.

“Oh, right. Sorry,” Central mutters, seeming properly chastised. She begins walking toward Ethan and gestures for the other two to follow. The chamber is quiet, eerily so, and as Benji looks around the perfectly square dimensions, he is suddenly drawn back to that steel death trap in the strip club. The snap of bone and squishing of flesh seems to reverberate through his ears, and he can feel his slight grin suddenly drop. Then, he sees Ethan, bound and bruised, frowning with worry clear in his eyes, and he winces and forces his face into something more neutral. Of all the times to be caught up in the past, now is almost certainly the worst.

“Are you alright?” Benji calls weakly as they near Ethan.

“I’m fine, Benji,” Ethan replies soothingly, which is really quite unfair because Benji shouldn’t be the one who needs comforting. In spite of himself, he does feel slightly relieved by his response (even though he knows by this point that the only thing Ethan will ever let himself be is fine).

He jerks his head at Central, then the Pomme D’Or agent next to her. “Who are these two?”

“You can call me Central,” Central says smoothly.

“Central,” the agent repeats snidely. “What a ridiculous name.”

“Probably better than yours,” Central replies petulantly.

“My name’s Peter,” the man says defensively.

Central smirks slightly as Benji walks around and begins undoing Ethan’s bonds. “Oh, Peter, what a great name. Do you think we could trade?”

Peter glares balefully at Central. “At the very least, I have the guts to go by my real name. Do-“ He turns to Benji. “Do you even know her real name?”

“Uh, no,” Benji mutters distractedly as his fingers fumble loosely with the plastic binds. Surprisingly, one of the things they had left out of formal IMF training was untying knots and undoing binds, which, in his opinion, seems a bit more practical than, say, how to safely (relatively) jump out of a car going 90 miles an hour.

Central seems slightly panicked as Peter’s expression turns smug, but just as he opens his mouth to speak, a loud groaning noise emits from the garage-door-like steel panel on the other side of the room. It is a sound Benji is becoming all too familiar with, seeing as Pomme D’Or has some strange fixation on steel or otherwise some hatred for every other kind of metal.

“They’ve seen us,” Peter mutters. Benji’s hands begin to tremor, though he manages to liberate Ethan’s wrists from the binding just as the panel begins to recede upward into the wall.

“Benji, hurry,” Ethan calls, though his tone is flat and relaxed.

“Yeah, I’m trying.” He kneels down and begins tugging hurriedly at the binding around his feet, feeling a bit like an incompetent fool.

Central and Peter are facing the rising panel. Peter glances nervously at Central as she lifts the strap of her sniper rifle off her shoulder and, letting it hang loosely, peers intently through the scope.

“Any idea who’s coming?” Central asks. All traces of aggression or irritation are gone from her voice, replaced by a single-minded focus that Benji has come to appreciate and slightly rely on.

“Grunts,” Peter replies quite confidently. “In cars or motorcycles, wielding standard-class assault rifles and none of the skill to use them well.”

Benji finally manages to untie the bond and leans back with a huff as Ethan springs from his seat. He can now see a thick rectangle of darkness peeking through the opening revealed by the retreating panel.

“So,” Central begins. “Am I the only one with a gun?”

“You must have a gun,” Benji says to Peter. “Please tell me you have a gun.”

Peter shakes his head ruefully. “No. I didn’t think I’d need it.”

As Benji gawps helplessly at Peter, Ethan steps forward and states, “look, it’s not ideal, but we’ll just have to work with what we have.” He turns to Central. “Hand me the sniper rifle.”

Central raises her head slightly, and her lips quirk upward. “I don’t think so, Ethan.”

“Wh- just give it to me already,” Ethan stammers out. Central shakes her head once more.

“Look,” Ethan says, frustration evident in his voice, “the one with the sniper rifle will act as bait while the other three ambush. You want to be bait?”

Benji stares fearfully at the growing rectangle of darkness in front of them, his mind a mess of regrets, half-formed thoughts, and worst-case scenarios. Then, he sees a clear circle of light piercing through the otherwise pure dark, and then several more pop up behind it. The rate of increase of their size could probably be directly inversely related to Benji’s capacity to resist tearing his hair out.

He understands Ethan’s plan, and so he also recognizes that the one holding the sniper rifle will, ironically, be the one least in need of combat proficiency.

He requires very little time to evaluate the situation and determine who should be the bait. Undoubtedly, both Central and Ethan are better at hand-to-hand combat than him, and he feels a little uneasy handing their only gun to Peter, a man who has probably only cooperated thus far to survive and therefore might think betrayal might be his best chance of living. In other words, there is only one sensible choice for bait.

“I’ll do it,” he announces with only a slight waver. “Give me the rifle.”

Even as Central turns around to give him an inscrutable look, Ethan protests, “what? No. Benji, that is a horrible idea.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Benji says loudly. “Just-“

Central tosses him the rifle with a slight nod, turns around, and sprints for the rising panel. He feels simultaneously gratified and mystified by her lack of hesitation.

Benji aims the rifle pointedly at the panel and nods at Ethan. Ethan’s glare quickly morphs into something much more fearful and uncertain, and then he glances at the panel, only a small strip of which is visible now, and, with one last look at Benji, bolts towards it. Peter follows after him a second later.

Benji’s experience with sniper rifles is entirely composed of the few times he had to use them in training and the single time he was forced to use one out in the field, and, from those times, he concluded that sniper rifles definitely weren’t for him. He tries to keep his grip steady and constant, but his hands shake seemingly of their own accord. A bead of sweat rolls down his forehead and narrowly avoids his eye.

Central and Peter crouch down by one side of the opening with Ethan by the other. The circles of light grow ever larger until Benji can barely espy a car emerging from the darkness. Two indistinguishable figures sit hunched in the front, and though he can’t see their eyes, he can imagine them grinning maliciously, assault rifles on their laps and eyes trained on Benji’s form.

He gulps as the rumble of engines becomes audible, and several more people on motorcycles appear behind the leading car. He readjusts the rifle in his arms once more and tries to focus his sights on the first car. Perhaps he can kill the driver and disrupt the movement of the people behind the car.

The crosshair wobbles and oscillates uncontrollably, and the motion becomes only slightly less erratic as Benji remembers to breathe slowly and deeply. He stoutly points the rifle at the figure on the right in the car. Besides the faint grumble of engines, it is eerily silent. Central tenses and rises slightly, her expression a perfect representation of a dormant ocean (quiet, waiting, and ever so slightly frightening). Ethan peers around the corner, then quickly leans back and flashes Benji a slight grin. Benji was and still isn’t sure how Ethan always manages to smile in these situations.

With a wince, he pulls the trigger. A crack splits the quiet and reverberates around the massive chamber, and several meters away, a hole materializes on the windshield of the leading car. The driver snaps his head back involuntarily, then slumps forward onto the wheel. Benji breathes a sigh of relief as the car begins to slow down and veer vaguely to the right. The person in the passenger’s seat lunges to the right, harshly shoves the body over, and vainly attempts to steer the car back to its original path. Perhaps there is something disquieting about being squished in the same seat as your suddenly dead comrade, however, because the car instead swerves suddenly to the left and crashes into the wall. The thundering impact is followed by two quieter ones as two motorcycles impact the static car, the drivers flipping off their vehicles, over the car, and onto the floor with painful-sounding thuds.

Six more people on motorcycles swing around the car and continue to approach, and instead of slowing down, they seem to accelerate towards Benji. He nods nervously at Ethan just as they enter the chamber, and, as one, the ambush group surges forth.

Ethan stretches out both his hands and catches the first rider in an iron grip that leaves him struggling in the air as his motorcycle zooms away and collides into the opposite wall with a sonorous impact. A gust of air blows past Benji with the vehicle, and strands of his hair, already in a state of inordinate disarray, flutter with it.

Central’s approach is slightly more aggressive – she quickly lifts one foot and thrusts it into the second rider’s helmet, effectively clotheslining him or her. The person is launched off the bike and flips once in the air before landing as the motorcycle wobbles its way to the other side and skids to a halt just before colliding with the wall.

Peter, probably a little less confident in this plan than Central or Ethan, simply punches a passing rider in the gut as they pass. He takes several steps back as the rider tilts involuntarily to the right, takes one hand off the black steering bar to hold his stomach, and has a relatively soft landing as he separates from his bike and slides with it on the ground for several meters. He grunts as he forces himself up with one hand, and Benji, stalwartly ignoring the twisting feeling in his gut, dispatches him with a bullet in the head.

The next three riders, just far back enough to see the ambush, screech to a stop. They dismount as one and extract the rifles from their backs. A spike of panic stabs Benji in the heart as one person aims at him, but he manages to keep his grip steady enough to shoot the rider in the gut. They tumble backward and fall onto their back, motionless.

Central sprints for the next rider, disarming them with a twist of the wrist that also sends them flying over Central’s arm and face-down into the ground with a loud thud. Ethan leaps around her and socks the last rider in the face, planting his knee in their chest and simultaneously propelling his elbow into their pelvic region (Benji feels the urge to wince sympathetically). Peter stands back cautiously, perhaps wondering if it might be a good idea to fully turn to their side after all.

Benji feels rather victorious as he brings the rifle down and jogs toward Ethan, but as Ethan turns, his face is grim and determined. Benji halts as something occurs to him – perhaps they finally saved Ethan, but Brandt, Carter, and Luther are nowhere to be seen, and he doesn’t suppose they’ll find them somewhere safe and healthy in the dark tunnel leading out of here.

“Come on, Benji,” he calls. “We should get out of here before these guys wake up.” He looks pointedly at the rider he attacked, who is already groaning quietly and clutching at the area between his legs with pained wheezes.

“Uh,” Central says uncertainly, “I don’t know how to ride a motorcycle.” She gives a cursory look at the car, then quickly dismisses the idea as she sees the smoke rising from the crumpled hood.

“I do,” Peter volunteers reluctantly. He mounts a bike, and Central, equally as reluctantly, gets on. Quietly, by some silent agreement Benji thinks they’ve had for a long time, he and Ethan get on their own motorcycle, and without a word, the engines rev, the headlights flicker on, and they drive off into the dark tunnel.

“Do you know where they took the others?” Benji asks over the whistle of the wind, making no attempt to hide the anxiety in his voice.

“No,” Ethan admits simply. “I’m sorry, Benji. They had us separated into individual cells. They knocked me unconscious and I woke up in that room back there alone.”

“Not really your fault. You were, er, probably being tortured,” Benji replies uncomfortably. He feels obligated to at least mention it (because Ethan probably won’t), even though the mere thought of it is enough to make Benji want to grab a bucket and forcibly expel all of his lunch into it.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. He isn’t sure what for exactly, because there’s simply too much to be sorry about. Sorry for allowing you to be captured, sorry for taking so long to rescue you, sorry for always forcing you to choose between the mission and me, sorry for being an incompetent-

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Ethan says sincerely. “We’ll find a way to rescue them.” Benji wordlessly clings ever so slightly closer to Ethan.

The tunnel is, for the most part, entirely straight. Considering the pitch dark surrounding them, Benji is grateful for it, though Ethan expertly maneuvers around any slight bends or curves anyhow.

“Those two,” Ethan begins, and he nods at the two figures riding in front of them. “How do you know them?”

Benji can’t help but let a slight grin form on his lips. “It’s a bit of a funny story, actually. Central saved my life, shot a man right before he was about to kill me. Well, that’s not really the funny bit, but-“

“Sorry,” Ethan interrupts, “when did this happen?”

“Oh, this morning, I suppose,” Benji responds lightly. It’s surreal, really, thinking about how he had just met this woman today and they had already gone through so much together. It feels natural to consider her a part of the team, though Benji can guess by Ethan’s frown that he doesn’t agree (yet).

“This morning,” Ethan repeats slowly. “And you trust her?”

“Well, mostly,” Benji says, because even though she’s saved his life at least three times by now, he can’t help but wonder at the fear he saw in her expression when Peter was about to tell them her name. Benji is certain he’s never seen her before, and Ethan apparently hasn’t either, but something must have put that anxiety on Central’s face.

“And that guy there, Peter?”

“Oh, well, he’s a Pomme D’Or agent-“

“What?” Ethan swivels his head around to stare incredulously at Benji.

“-Look, he may be our only way to get to Luther, Carter, and Brandt. And he seems friendly enough.” Benji isn’t a greenhorn, his ears are completely dry (thank you very much), and he knows that there is a more-than-likely chance Peter will eventually betray them. But, at the moment, Benji is out of ideas other than asking Peter.

“He doesn’t have a gun,” Ethan states after a moment.

“No gun,” Benji affirms.

Ethan releases a sigh. “Well, it’s true he may be our only way of finding our team.”

There is a sudden upward incline in the tunnel, and as they climb it steadily, Benji can see, just peeking over the top, a sliver of light.

“We must be nearly out,” Benji comments excitedly.

“Hey, Peter,” Ethan yells, “where does this lead to?”

Peter doesn’t look back as he says, “It’s a kind of… valley that separates two towns. You might want to stop at the top.”

Just after he says this, they pass the incline and move to flat ground, and Benji finally sees the exit about a quarter mile away from them, a miniscule square of light brimming with light that makes Benji smile slightly.

As they near it, he squints confusedly at the strange distortions that seem to overlay the sight of a desolate road and, beyond that, a small outcropping of orange-red rocks.

“Camouflage,” Peter mentions casually. “There’s nothing actually there, so we can ride straight through, but we might want to slow down to make the turn.”

Ethan acquiesces and, with a slight groan from the engine, decelerates as they approach the exit.

Benji feels something like gratitude as Peter, even without any prompting, says, “I know where they’re keeping your friends. I can lead you to them.”

They’re only a few meters from the slightly blurry opening. Small waves of pixels undulate in random patterns across it, and Benji feels uneasy at the thought of riding through it.

“Why?” Central asks. “Why are you helping us? What happened with the traps must have been accidental.” Benji understands what Central means – that Pomme D’Or might not have abandoned Peter yet, that his best course of action might be to turn on them now instead of helping them further, that Benji threw a wrench in their confusing machinations and they never meant to kill or maim Peter.

Peter probably understands what Central is saying as well, as he says, “There’s no such thing as ‘accidental’ with Ambrosia. If he wanted to save me, he could have. Instead, he let me be nearly burnt to a crisp. And even if, somehow, Pomme D’Or hadn’t forsaken me by then, my assistance in this escape has certainly sealed my fate. Ambrosia does not tolerate insubordination in any amount. There’s no going back.”

They pass by the distortion and finally, finally drive out into the open. Besides the sudden presence of light that makes Benji squint involuntarily, there isn’t that much of a shift, but Benji still feels like leaping off the bike and celebrating in some overly bombastic way. Instead, he sighs in relief as Ethan steers to the right and seamlessly integrates them onto the mostly empty road.

“So,” Ethan calls to Peter, “where are we going?”

Peter’s face is absent of any humor or mirth as he, very seriously, answers, “flower shop.”

“They’re being held in a flower shop?” Central asks.

“Well, no, more specifically, in the underground fighting ring underneath the shop. You need a special passphrase to get in.”

“They’re-“ Benji cuts himself as it dawns on him. “You can’t be serious. Are they actually-“

“Pomme D’Or needs money somehow,” Peter finishes grimly. “And what better way than with their prisoners?”

“Oh, of course,” Benji hisses sarcastically, “what a perfectly obvious thing to do. Just like luring a pair of hapless fools to a strip club so they can be crushed to death, then attempting to kill them with some comically trapped room that probably cost much more than any death trap ought to. Your leader sounds perfectly sane.”

Ethan looks back at him and smirks good-naturedly. “Strip club?”

Benji glares at Ethan until he turns back. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Crushed to death?”

“Maybe I’ll tell you later.”

“Comically trapped?”

“Ethan-“

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Ethan says teasingly. Benji feels a sudden warmth bloom in his chest at his tone, so unlike the coldness he has become accustomed to, and the four of them drive off into the distance.


	10. Flower Shops and Fighting Rings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Without a doubt the longest chapter. I'm not sure why this one in particular turned out so long, but, in my defense, a lot happens.

Benji imagines there are certain strategies used by small business owners to attract customers – big blaring signs announcing sales, stylish logos, aesthetically appealing arrangements and such. As he gets off the motorcycle and gazes, horrified and vaguely awed, at the front of the flower shop, he can only conclude that the owner (or whoever designed it) must have known about all of these tactics and purposely done the exact opposite.

Plastered on a large window is a poster declaring, in neon yellow and green, that their prices have never been higher. Directly above that is a seemingly intentionally gaudy, lurid image of a sunflower doing something decidedly inappropriate with its stem, and the window to the right of the entrance has a mess of floral growth and vines that could have only originated from too much watering and sunlight and not enough actual management.

“It was originally a very nice place,” Peter comments pleasantly as he dismounts. “They did the most wonderful floral arrangements. Then Pomme D’Or bought it out and expanded the basement to accommodate this town’s burning desire to have an illegal fighting ring.”

Ethan regards the shop with a kind of ironic amusement, though his eyes are still alit with that steely determination that allows him to approach the door, covered in grime and oil and a few unidentifiable substances, without wavering.

“Maybe we should buy some gloves,” Central says uneasily as she eyes the door handle, which was likely once black but has much more of a brown tint now.

“Oh, come on,” Benji mutters, “we’ve faced down homicidal firemen and booby-trapped rooms, and you’re going to let a dirty door stop us?”

“No,” Central replies petulantly. She marches up to the door, lifts one foot up, and latches her shoe onto the handle. She then leaps back on her other foot and rotates her leg clockwise. With a slight creak, the door swings open.

“Hurry up,” she says nervously as Ethan steps through the doorway. “Maybe if we’re quick enough, I won’t have to burn my shoes.”

Once the last person, Peter, crosses the threshold, Central lowers her foot and darts inside before the door closes. Relative to the probably intentional filthy appearance of the front of the store, the exterior is surprisingly well-maintained. The counter, on the other side of which a bored-looking, disgruntled employee stands, has some inexplicable scuff marks, and the walls are lined with broken pots and drooping plants, but, at the very least, Benji is mostly certain the liquid that covers the floor thinly is dirty water.

Peter raises one hand pre-emptively, then loudly proclaims, “Je possède la volonté de me batter.” Benji’s French, though admittedly rusty, is enough that he knows that means, “I have the will to fight.”

The employee gives a dramatic sigh, slouches visibly, then trudges around the counter and to a door on the back wall. As he walks, his hand drifts to his pocket and, very slowly, pulls out a brass key.

“Entrez dans le paradis des guerriers,” he intonates flatly. He sluggishly inserts the key and turns it, then opens it with a loose tug and leans to the side.

Peter goes first, stepping toward the entrance with a kind of sure-footed confidence Benji never understood. “Thank you,” he adds politely as he walks through. The employee glares sullenly at him.

As Benji proceeds past the door, he squints into the dim corridor. It continues for several feet more before turning sharply right. Their footsteps echo eerily in the silence.

The door slams shut behind them with a thud that reverberates through the hall. Benji resists the urge to shiver, turn back, and bang on the door until it opens.

“Is that the only exit?” Ethan asks, though he doesn’t seem very worried.

“There’s another one in the main chamber, but it’s heavily guarded,” Peter replies.

“So,” Benji starts nervously, “have we got a plan? Or are we just going to get in there and, er, hope for the best?”

“We’ve done alright without a plan,” Central says from behind him.

“We were lucky,” Benji corrects. “Really, I was lucky I wasn’t killed the second they kidnapped me.”

“You were kidnapped?” Ethan almost shouts, the calm in his voice suddenly replaced by incredulity and anger.

“-And promptly rescued,” Benji says hastily. “It was a good thing, really. I don’t think we would have found you otherwise.”

Ethan remains silent for a moment, then finally says, “you’re not injured, are you?”

Benji huffs nervously. “Me? No, not at all. Well, that’s a miracle all in itself, I suppose.”

They round the corner and begin walking down an almost dangerously steep set of stairs. Benji is expectedly anxious and fearful, his mind swimming with half-finished plans and worst-case scenarios. He doesn’t understand how the other three can seem so tranquil considering the circumstances – they have one gun, no plan, and a supremely powerful and very malicious criminal organization, headed by a madman, as an opponent. He’s pretty sure he must be the only sane one in this entire group.

Benji’s quickly spiraling train of thought is derailed as he bumps into Ethan’s back. He looks up, and suddenly realizes that the darkness has been usurped by glaring lights, howling crowds, and the screeching of an excited commentator. They stand now at the top of a massive stadium, and Benji can see below him a veritable swarm of people gathered around the central ring, lit up with intense white spotlights.

He peers frightfully at the ring, because he certainly doesn’t recognize one of the fighters, but the other, with his thick dark brown hair and stout figure is unfortunately familiar.

“It’s Brandt,” he breathes out with no small amount of horror.

In the ring, Brandt ducks below a jab and punches his opponent in the balls.

“Oh, shit,” Benji comments. The other fighter staggers back, one hand clenching his pelvis forcibly while his other tightens in a fist by his side, and the crowd lets out a collective gasp. “I guess anything goes in an underground fighting arena.”

“Ok,” Ethan says hurriedly, “this is good. Uh-“ he begins glancing around the massive chamber with narrowed eyes.

“How is this good?” Central mutters. “This entire fight is heavily monitored. There’s no way we can rescue Brandt.”

“Brandt can handle himself,” Ethan replies. “Right now, we need to focus on getting to the others. One person should stay here to monitor the situation while the other three rescue Carter and Luther.”

“I’ll stay,” Peter volunteers.

“No, you won’t,” Central says automatically. “I’ll stay.”

Peter scowls angrily at her. “You still think I can’t be trusted?”

“Yes,” Central responds as if the answer were obvious. “You said you’ve forsaken Pomme D’Or, but that doesn’t mean sticking with us is your best chance of survival.”

“Then why would I lead you here?” Peter retorts.

Central snorts derisively. “To build trust, I presume, so you can pull a stunt like this and then run away with your tail tucked between your legs.”

Peter looks about ready to tackle Central when Ethan steps between then and loudly states, “ok, look, I understand you two don’t like each other-“

“At all,” Benji adds wryly.

“-But can we all agree that the most important thing right now is saving my team?”

Peter turns his head sharply away from Central. “If it takes me away from her, sure, I’ll go with you two.”

“Just get out of here,” Central snaps peevishly.

“And, er, go where, exactly?” Benji asks. His eyes scan the room desperately for any sort of irregularity that might indicate entry to another room, but the lights surrounding the ring are exceedingly dim, barely enough for Benji to make out the other side of the room.

“I’ve been here before,” Peter mentions, eyes darting around the chamber. He points across the room to an area occupied by several menacing, heavily-armed men in bulletproof vests. “That’s the only other exit. Besides that, I’m pretty sure there’s no other points of access.”

“What, so we have no idea where Luther and Carter are being held?” Benji mutters, slightly panicked. He had had some vague notion that, since Peter had led them here, he must have known where specifically they were keeping the team, but as he observes the former Pomme D’Or agent scouring the walls for a lead, he realizes with a sinking heart that he doesn’t, which means they might never find Luther and Carter.

It’s strange – in that great, big, huge, cavernous room, Benji somehow feels trapped. It was alright when he actually had some plan, something to act on or do, but the fact of the matter is, this was the plan: go to the flower shop, get to the underground fighting ring, rescue Brandt, Carter, and Luther. He no longer has a plan, and, by the looks of it, neither do the three highly competent agents (technically, he supposes, Central isn’t an agent, although he’s beginning to wonder if perhaps she lied about being a civilian) standing around him. It suddenly occurs to him they’re in enemy territory, watching Brandt fight for his life and helpless to save him or their two other teammates. He doesn’t know what he would do if they were to die – it was always supposed to be the four of them against the world. He understands that, in their line of work, it’s almost natural to die from unnatural causes, but he’d never really considered the possibility of seeing any of his friends – and that’s what they are to him, really, friends, not just allies or co-workers – die. He had ignored the odds and stubbornly stuck to his belief they’d all somehow make it out alive, and now here he is, clueless and out of ideas, and without a way to rescue them from a certainly perilous fate. Benji feels like tearing out his hair and screaming until his throat stops functioning. They had gone through so much – he and Central – and what had it all been for? To stand here, so close to them, and simply let them go? He feels himself tearing up ever so slightly, and he can’t even decide if it matters anymore if he maintains his composure. Does any of it matter anymore? Does-

“There,” Central announces clearly, one finger aimed at the floor. Benji snaps his head up to gawp at her with a mixture of relief and disbelief. He notices that the sniper rifle, which had been strapped to her back (and he can’t exactly remember when he gave it to her, now that he thinks about it), is now held in her hand.

“I saw it through my scope,” she clarifies quickly. “A hatch on the floor near the ring.” Benji suddenly notices the high concentration of guards lingering around the area at which she’s pointing, whose gazes seem entirely removed from the fight going on near them.

Just as quickly as he feels his hopes rises, they deflate. It’s better, at least, to know where they might be being held, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that the hatch is located in a region of high traffic and surrounded by several guards.

“We’ll need some sort of distraction,” Ethan comments quietly, his voice nearly drowned out by the distant din of rowdy spectators.

Central grins madly. “This Brandt guy, would you say he’s a quick thinker?”

Ethan frowns at her as Benji feels the familiar stirring of anxiety in his gut. “Usually. Why?” Ethan asks.

Central is already looking upward, her eyes alight with insane machinations and daringly stupid maneuvers. “Just wait a few minutes.”

Then, she’s suddenly lunging for the wall, which (Benji realizes belatedly) is covered in a grid of metal bars that stretch to the ceiling. As Benji moves his sight upward, he looks at the similarly metal lattice attached to the ceiling, hanging above them with spotlights and lamps installed on the underside.

“Wh-what is she doing?” Ethan splutters, turning to Benji.

Benji raises both hands in a conciliatory gesture. “How should I know? I can’t read her mind.”

“This is ridiculous,” Peter almost shouts. “Complete insanity. We should be- should be coming up with a real plan, a surefire way to reach the hatch, not some foolish scheme she came up with on a whim.”

Any further discussion is cut off as the crowd surrounding the ring somehow becomes even louder, their shouts echoing chaotically off the walls and ceiling in a high-pitched cacophony that makes Benji’s ears ache slightly. He refocuses his attention on the ring, and feels almost triumphant when he sees Brandt, standing heaving over the motionless body of his opponent.

“Another knockout, folks!” the commentator screams excitedly. “Can anyone stop this unstoppable fighting machine!?”

The crowd roars once more, though Benji isn’t exactly sure what the intent behind it is. Are they agreeing with him, or perhaps booing Brandt?

“See?” Ethan says smugly. “Didn’t I tell you he could handle himself?”

“I wasn’t worried,” Benji lies, because regardless of how much faith he has in Brandt’s fighting abilities, even from far away Benji can tell how bruised and exhausted he seems.

“Really?” Ethan asks. “You seemed pretty worried.”

“We’re in the dark, you can’t tell what I seem,” Benji protests lightly.

“Guys, this is terrible,” Peter informs them with clenched teeth. “If Brandt’s won the match, then they’ll take him off the stage, and they won’t just stuff him down the hatch while everyone’s watching. We’ll lose sight of him.”

“Huh,” Benji mutters, “well-“

The crowd’s cheers suddenly hush as the limp figure below Brandt stirs. One arm shoots up and propels him upward, and he manages to assume a kneeling position. Brandt steps back and raises his arms once more.

“What is this!?” the commentator screeches. “Will Joaquin rise once more!?”

Benji winces as the feedback from the microphone reaches a decidedly painful high-pitched tone. “It’s a wonder nobody’s gone deaf from this guy yet,” he says dryly. “If he’s going to be shouting the whole time, shouldn’t he at least turn down his microphone volume? His voice is 90 decibels or something like that.”

“C’mon, Brandt,” Ethan whispers (having apparently ignored Benji’s brilliant comment).

Benji regards him briefly with a frown, then turns his head back to the wall behind them to check on Central. However, even as he takes several seconds to closely scrutinize it, he sees no sign of her. Unbidden, his fear rises like the ever-present tide. Was she taken somehow? Did she fall into one of the lower layers? Or-

Benji resists the urge to suppress a sigh. He isn’t exactly sure still what Central’s diversion is, but he swears he catches a sliver of motion among the metal lattice on the ceiling.

“Well, it’s good for us,” Peter deadpans. “Though I don’t think Brandt agrees.”

“Hey, Benji, do you see Central?” Ethan calls without averting his gaze from the fighting ring.

“Er, no,” Benji replies absently. “But I’m thinking we’re about to see something pretty special.”

He turns back to the fight. Brandt is now socking his opponent in the jaw, though his attack seems slightly sluggish, and Joaquin barely staggers backward at the blow. Brandt retreats several paces, then neatly rolls out of the way of an ill-advised tackle that sends Joaquin into the border ropes. He rebounds with a slight grunt onto his back, and several people snicker.

“Guys, we should move a bit closer to the hatch,” Benji hisses.

Ethan and Peter wordlessly begin moving forward with Benji. They proceed down darkened steps and pass by uncomfortable looking seats on both sides, most of which are unoccupied. Almost all of the spectators have congregated as closely to the ring as they can, and Benji isn’t sure whether that’s a good thing or not – on one hand, it means there aren’t many people who have noticed them at all, but on the other, the hatch is thoroughly obscured by both guards and unruly observers, who both intentionally and unwittingly step on it periodically and leave very few intervals in which it is completely free of feet.

As they near the hatch, Benji can make out a small indentation in it that he assumes is a handle of sorts. He feels a wave of relief wash over him when he sees no keyholes or card readers installed anywhere near it as well. He quickly dismisses the notion that this might, in fact, be a little too easy, because he supposes the swarm of guards surrounding it is more than enough to compensate for the lack of a locking mechanism.

“I think we should be able to just open it,” Benji reports dutifully to the other two. “There’s a handle but no lock.”

“Good,” Ethan says, his eyes still trained on the fight. “The second Central does the diversion, we’re opening it and jumping in. With any luck, no one will notice.”

“Well, we may not have any actual equipment or weapons, but we do seem to have luck in high supply,” Benji replies wryly.

Brandt shoves his foot into his opponent’s stomach, then circles around his trembling, hunched body and propels him into the ground with an elbow in the back. The crowd waits for several seconds with hushed breath, then breaks into another round of cheers and applause as Joaquin makes no move to get back up.

“I think that’s it, folks! Joaquin is down for the count!” the commentator shouts.

“Where the hell is Central?” Peter abruptly asks, moody and anxious. The referee climbs unsteadily into the arena and kneels by Joaquin’s still body. The clamor of the crowd intensifies as he raises one hand, stands up, and swings his arm down so it squarely points at Brandt.

“We may have to do this without her,” Ethan says hurriedly. “Listen, I think one person should stay on Brandt while the other two go down the hatch.”

“And there you have it, Brandt has once again bested his opponent!” the commentator roars. “He’s on a streak, and he doesn’t seem to intend to let up-“

At this point, the bedlam of the crowd and the yelling of the commentator is almost background noise to Benji, which makes the sudden crack of gunfire all the more noticeable. It resounds across the entire stadium, a single thunderous noise that silences the audience and commentator alike. Just in front of Benji, a spurt of blood explodes from a guard’s head, and he collapses with a quiet thud onto the floor. The guards around him back away uneasily, and a few spectators instinctively turn their head upwards for a source.

“Now!” a voice – Central’s – screams hoarsely from far above them. Benji is able to just glimpse her up in the girders, perched on a beam with a rope in her hand, located a few meters from the center of the stadium.

Benji knows the best course of action might be to open the hatch now, but, in his defense, neither Ethan nor Peter move an inch as well. They all peer up at the ceiling, at Central, as she proceeds to jump off the beam and hurtle through the air, rope streaming down behind her.

“Brandt!” she yells at what is probably the very top of her lungs. “Catch!” Brandt gazes with an expression of sheer bemusement at the falling woman.

She’s only a few seconds from becoming the janitor’s problem when the rope, still clutched in one hand and leading all the way back up to the ceiling, catches on an adjacent bar (from the one on which she’d originally been) with a loud twang. With blinding speed, her hair a blurry triangle trailing behind her, she swings over the heads of a large group on the right side of the arena and right into Brandt. Somehow, she manages to grip Brandt in the arm not holding the rope and holds him tightly as they both catapult over the fighting ring. She finally lets go of the rope about three-quarters of the way through the swing, and the two of them fall as one somewhere in the darkened bleachers.

“What,” Benji says. Everyone around him, including the guards, are staring in a similarly blank way at either the limp rope or the assumed landing spot of the two.

Ethan, perhaps because he’s used to doing such stunts, isn’t nearly as stunned. He darts to the hatch, opens it with a slight grunt, and gestures for Benji and Peter to go in. Benji numbly obeys and follows Peter, his feet quickly meeting the hard press of a rung. The hatch leads to a surprisingly well-illuminated room, the floor of which seems to be composed of clean white tiles, and Benji rapidly descends the ladder.

“That woman is insane,” Ethan comments as he proceeds down after them, something like fondness in his voice. His right arm drags the hatch back shut.

“Oh, you would know,” Benji replies with a grin. A slight clatter echoes through the room as Ethan lands beside him.

Benji warily examines the room, almost anticipating some manner of lethal trap or trigger to said trap. However, Peter, who seems to usually exercise a healthy amount of caution, steps forth without a hint of hesitation.

“Unless they were already lying to me at that point, the trapmaster used up all his resources on the spinning room of death,” Peter says. “In any case, we don’t have time to check for traps.”

“No, we don’t,” Ethan agrees reluctantly.

The walls are covered in a smooth steel, but the ceiling is still a jagged assortment of rocky peaks and craggy edges, as if no attempt was made to install something better after the initial excavation. The room itself is relatively small compared to the arena from which they just came, and in the center of the walls at Benji’s sides lies two large, flat panes of glass each. As Benji walks forward, he quickly sees the beginnings of a room behind each window, and then, with a few more steps, two figures slumped in individual rooms (and the other two thankfully unoccupied).

It’s them. Carter, with bruises covering her arms and face and a bloody nose, sat limply against a wall with a dangling head and closed eyes, and Luther in a similar state of injury.

“It’s them,” Benji breathes out redundantly. He approaches Luther’s room and presses his face against the smooth glass. The anxiety swirling in his stomach remains, but it is matched now by the comforting warmth of hope. They don’t seem exactly ready to jump out of their cells and make a daring escape, but for a few seconds, Benji allows himself to indulge in a wonderful and definitely delusional fantasy in which they all make it out of this alive and no less unharmed than they entered. These people – yes, they’re the only hope any of them have of successfully completing this mission with minimal (preferably no) causalities, but, more than that, they are his friends.

He looks around belatedly for a keypad or card reader or any kind of device that might open the rooms. A cold, bracing shock runs up his spine as he realizes there is absolutely nothing.

Benji begins helplessly, “Peter, what-“

“The rooms are voice-controlled,” Peter supplies calmly. “We’ll need a specific phrase.”

Ethan knocks gently twice on the glass of Jane’s cell and inspects the surface with a practiced eye. He then raises his foot and swings it into the glass. It bounces off with a high-pitched echo. “It’s reinforced. We won’t be able to break through.”

“Well, you know the passphrase, Peter, don’t you?” Benji says even as his stomach sinks with dread and fear.

Peter shakes his head. “I’m not involved with prisoner transport. There was no reason for them to tell me.”

“You must have some ideas,” Benji replies desperately. “Just- what do you think it could be?”

“It’s probably French.”

“Ok, right, good start. What else?”

“Maybe a biblical reference. Then again, it could just be a random assortment of numbers and letters. You can never really know with Pomme D’Or.”

Benji lowers his head and grasps his temple between his index finger and thumb. Inexplicably, he feels a strange pressure forming there. “Maybe we should just start, er, shouting stuff.”

Peter’s expression suddenly sours. “Really, Benji, you think Pomme D’Or – Ambrosia, really – would be foolish enough to come up with a phrase you could just guess? I mean, I-“

“Open sesame,” Benji declares. “Open door. Open glass. Password123.”

Peter glares at Benji. “Really, this is completely-“

“PasswordABC123,” Ethan interrupts, and his eyes sparkle with an inexplicably humor. “Golden Apple. Dieu. Sésame. Mot de passe.”

“Mot de passe un deux trois,” Benji says suddenly. There is a near-instant mechanical whirring, followed by the sudden displacement of air as the glass planes shoot upward into the steel wall.

Peter sputters something angrily, potentially in French (not that Benji can tell, it mostly sounds like a disorganized mess of syllables and consonants), as Ethan and Benji rush into the rooms and kneel by Luther and Carter respectively.

“Jane,” Benji shouts distraughtly at her lolling head. He shakes her once, twice, and she suddenly coughs out a discomforting mixture of blood and saliva and blearily stares at Benji.

“Wh- is that you, Benji?” she mutters.

Benji props her up with one arm and ushers her out of the room with the other. “Yes, yes, it’s me. We have to get out of here, Jane.”

“Oh, okay,” she says unclearly. She turns her head upward and squints at the rocky ceiling. “Where are we?”

“Peter!” Ethan calls from the opposite cell. He’s hunched over Luther’s motionless body, one hand pressed against an artery in his neck. “He’s alive but unconscious. Help me carry him.”

Peter reluctantly walks to them, slings one of Luther’s arm over his neck, and hauls him out of the cell with a veritable torrent of grunts and half-made complaints. “How are we supposed to escape with this dead weight?”

“Hey,” Ethan says warningly, “he’s not dead yet.”

“Ok, sure, but if we keep dragging him along, we’ll all be dead soon,” Peter replies, and Benji can tell the fury in his voice stems from panic and fear.

“We don’t-“ Ethan grunts. Luther’s floors drag with a slight squeak across the floor. “-abandon our own people. If we did, we’d be just as bad as Pomme D’Or or any other criminal organization.”

Benji takes a step back as Jane waves him off and unsteadily rises to her feet. Peter pivots around, lets Luther’s limp body lean against him, and glares at Ethan.

“It’s not the same, not even close. This is a matter of survival. If we don’t let him go, we don’t get out of here. You idiots can try if you want, but I’m not about to-“

“Not about to what?” Ethan interjects angrily. “Not about to turn tail and bolt just because the situation’s a little difficult? You know, Central was right about you. You’re a coward, Peter, and you’re only working with us because you think it’s your best shot at survival. Well, if that’s changed, then by all means, go ahead. Run. Leave us.” He jerks his head at the door looming ominously on the far side of the room.

“Am I a coward for wanting to live? I didn’t know that, Ethan, because that must mean practically every human except you is a coward!”

“You can leave at any time, Peter,” Ethan growls dangerously. “Any time.”

“Will you two shut up?” Jane suddenly yells, her voice filled with irritation. “My head’s pounding just listening to this argument. We don’t have time for this.” She walks over to Luther’s slumped form with purpose.

“Luther, wake up!” she commands. She raises one hand, regards Luther with a mixture of regret and resolve, and then splits the room with a deafening crack as she brings her palm down onto his cheek.

The entire room is deathly silent, permeated only by a near-tangible tension as Luther stirs between Ethan and Peter. Benji likens the sensation he experiences as he watches Luther’s neck stiffen slightly to how it would probably feel to observe the Kraken rising from the dark depths of the ocean.

“Really, Carter?” Luther speaks quietly, nearly under his breath. Peter leaps back and blinks at him anxiously. “You couldn’t have done something else? Anything else?”

Carter shrugs sheepishly, her hand lowering to her side. “We need to get out of here, Luther, and if you didn’t wake up, Ethan and Mister Prissy Pants over there might have started brawling.”

“Excuse me!” Peter retorts indignantly. “I would have done no such thing.”

Ethan kneels by Luther and whispers, “can you stand?”

“Stop fussing,” Luther says, but there isn’t any heat or anger in his voice. Like Jane, his feet strain to lift him and support him, and he makes an audible grunt borne from effort and pain as he assumes his full height.

Benji can feel a grin stretching of its own accord on his face, but it quickly dissipates as he glances at Ethan and sees him surveying Luther’s injuries with an inexplicable guilt in the furrow of his brows. It’s nonsensical, because there was absolutely nothing Ethan could have done to prevent all the pain and hurt inflicted upon Jane and Luther. The only one who has any fault in this (besides the obvious, Pomme D’Or) is Benji, who escaped only due to the sacrifices of his team and who selfishly collapsed in a bed after instead of beginning the search immediately. Perhaps he didn’t inflict the wounds so awfully visible on his friends, but he may as well have watched as they were tortured and cheering with the crowd as they fought for their lives for all he did to try to save them.

Carter turns her head, a wild look in her eyes, and her mouth quirks downward. “Where’s Brandt? I don’t see him in a cell.”

“It’s…” Ethan hesitates. “…complicated. But he’s probably safe for now. We should worry about our own escape for now.”

Peter eagerly leads the party to the door, and, surprisingly, it opens easily. A darkened corridor lies beyond, and Benji thinks that the only conscious design choices Pomme D’Or must make is what type of metal (steel) and what kind of atmosphere (spookily cramped) they’ll implement in all of their structures.

Just as they begin heading through, the hatch behind them opens with a bone-rattling creak. Carter, the last person, hurries through and shuts the door before Benji can see who opened it.

“What if this is just a regular room and we’ve trapped ourselves?” Benji whispers urgently even as he walks forward. He supposes there isn’t really any need to whisper, only he can’t see very well in the dark even if the others can, and it seems to fit the grim tone of the situation.

“It isn’t,” Luther replies quite casually considering the circumstances. “This path eventually converges with a larger tunnel. My guess is-“

“It’s the alternate exit,” Peter finishes. “Once you entered that tunnel, which way did you go?”

“We turned around,” Luther says with not a small amount of irritation.

“Then we just continue going straight to get to the exit,” Peter summarizes smugly.

Silence pervades the air like a thick cloud, broken only when Carter softly asks, “who is this guy?”

“Oh, Peter? It- it’s a bit of a funny story, actually,” Benji starts hesitantly. He wonders if he should pre-emptively ask the two recent escapees to please not attack Peter.

“I was an operative for Pomme D’Or,” Peter clarifies quietly, displaying an unexpected level of bravery (as compared to the amount he usually shows).

“What?” Carter and Luther shout as one.

“Not anymore!” Peter says, and his voice fades slightly as he instinctively moves away from the group.

“He got a gun?” Luther asks hurriedly.

“No,” Ethan says.

Benji can almost imagine Luther turning around and giving Ethan a quizzical look, one eyebrow raised high in doubt. “You got a gun?”

“…No,” Ethan admits quietly.

“I was looking out for all of us when I said to ditch Luther!” Peter protests loudly. His voice echoes across the corridor. “I have no reason to attack you guys!”

“You said to ditch me!?” Luther’s voice seems to grow angrier with each word.

By this point, they’ve walked several meters from the door, and Benji can only see a glimmer of light peeking through the bottom edge. As he glances back, the sliver suddenly grows, thickening and intensifying into an almost blinding collection of light rays, a few of which are blocked by a silhouette that quickly slips out of the path of the light and into the shadow of the hall. The door creaks noisily, and Benji can barely see everyone freezing, snapping their head backs, and then, in some sort of silent agreement to which he is not privy, launching into a full-out sprint.

It’s surreal, really, running practically blind with some unknown pursuant hot on their heels. The stagnant, humid air of the hall whistles gently in Benji’s ears as he pushes forward with all of the force he can muster. Someone’s breath grows labored and audible, and it is the only indication Benji has that he hasn’t fallen behind. After several seconds, the ground beneath him becomes suddenly sloped upward, and he begins panting slightly from the exertion. His legs burn with the effort of maintaining a constant sprint, and he is reminded that, even if it weren’t for his general dislike of exercise, the fact that he hasn’t had a real chance to rest for several hours has made him much less physically capable than he usually is. Just as a strange burning sensation emerges in his chest, accompanied by an uncomfortable squeezing in the diaphragm, the ground graciously becomes flat once more.

He can just espy several figures running in front of him, and then, in front of them, a large, vaguely-block-like shape that occupies an entire fourth of the line.

As they approach the shape, he suddenly halts because, from the curvature of the front and the near-invisible glint of the windows, it is a car. He almost feels like grinning as he pulls the automatic car override capsule from his pocket, attaches it to the driver’s door, and yells out, “it’s a car! Get in!” The car comes to life with a gratifying rumble.

He stops long enough to make sure the figures in front of him stop and turn around before practically ripping the door open and throwing himself into the driver’s seat. The two doors on the right side of the car swing open, one figure slips into shotgun with hasty movements, and the other three squish into the backseats.

“Go, go!” Carter screams. A shot rings out, and a hole suddenly shatters into existence in the windshield to the right of Benji and lands right above Luther’s lowered head.

“For god’s sake, Benji-“ Luther cries out. Another bullet zooms straight through the car, into the windshield and out the rear window, as Benji backs up and swerves clockwise. The next shot is accompanied by the shrill peal of screeching tires against pavement, and a softer sputtering of the engine. Several more gunshots thunder, followed by the denting of metal and breaking of glass. Benji forces his hands to stop shaking and steps on the acceleration pedal as hard as possible. The car jolts forward with an incomprehensible speed, and perhaps their unknown assailant fires a few more rounds, but Benji probably wouldn’t be able to hear them over the rush of air through the bullet holes in the windshield and the insistent, irritating pounding of his heart.

Within 5 seconds, a faint light appears at the end of the long hallway, and Benji allows himself to slow down a tiny bit. His arms tremble, but not with fear – no, Benji feels only a breathless exhilaration, an indescribable excitement as he zooms nearer and nearer to the exit.

“Is everyone alright?” Ethan asks after a moment.

“I’m alive,” Luther says.

“Fine,” Peter reports unsteadily. As his voice comes from Benji’s right, he concludes he must have taken shotgun.

“Functional,” Carter says.

As the path is straight anyhow, Benji risks a glance both to see if they have anyone chasing them and, more importantly, to see his team, almost complete, sitting relatively safely in a single location. His head is light with either fatigue, uncontrollable joy, or probably both. He chuckles softly without any real intent, because it just seems like an appropriate thing to do in this time of triumph. There’s still a lot they have to do, but it’s not only him and Central anymore – he has the entire team now, a highly competent and highly skilled collection of agents who he can rely on (and, he thinks with some trepidation, who will be relying on him).

He jerks in his seat in surprise as Ethan calls his name.

“Benji, are you alright?” Ethan asks softly.

“Am I alright?” Benji repeats incredulously. “Are you kidding? I’m more than alright. I’m- I’m fantastic!” Somewhere deep in his mind, he recognizes that once the adrenaline has worn off and he’s assessed the situation with a clearer mind, his euphoria will disappear like a receding tide, but for the moment he is content to bask in the pleasant warmth of victory.

The light quickly grows in both size and intensity until it almost encompasses them completely. Through a haze of unadulterated jubilation, Benji notes a strange distortion in the opening, a rippling of blue waves that he recognizes as characteristic of Pomme D’Or’s hologram-based hidden entrances (or exits, in this case). He cautiously slows the car to a safe 20 miles an hour as they pass through the exit. The car rocks gently down onto an uneven, rocky surface, and Benji squints through the windshield faintly into the blinding daylight. He brings the car to a stop to allow his eyes to adjust.

As the burning white in his eyes resolves into a deserted road, he turns his head both ways and belatedly realizes he has no idea where to go.

“Does anyone know where we are?” Benji asks helplessly.

Peter leans forward and takes a moment to examine both directions with a narrowed gaze. Eventually, he collapses back into his seat and points a finger to the right. “The sun’s setting there, so that must be west. If we keep heading in that direction, we should see the town soon enough.”

Benji doesn’t exactly understand Peter’s logic, but, as he has no better ideas and no reason to go left, he obediently turns right and slips onto the cracked asphalt road.

“When we reach the town, we’ll head to a local café. That’s where Central and I agreed to meet if we were ever split up,” Benji states quietly.

The sky has turned a deep orange-red and rid itself of any obstructing clouds. If Benji thought they had the time, he probably would have stopped and taken a moment to really appreciate the sight, because he may not be a nature enthusiast, but he can certainly enjoy a nice sunset. His head turns of its own accord to catch Ethan in his peripheral vision, and a vision rises unbidden to the forefront of his mind of him and Ethan sitting on some cliff. Someone’s head is one the other’s shoulder, and they’re probably about four seconds away from kissing, but Benji quickly banishes the image before he can conjure up any more details. It’s a ridiculous fantasy for too many reasons, and one he certainly shouldn’t be entertaining.

Ethan is seated in the middle, stuck firmly between Carter and Luther, a look of sheer exhaustion on his face. A reddening bruise, inflamed and ugly, sits above his right eye, and Benji has to stop himself from wincing. He understands Ethan’s had far worse injuries, and that it’s basically in the job description of an IMF agent to be injured and hurt, but it never stops him from feeling like the scum of the Earth whenever Ethan comes back with an ugly bump on his head or a cut on his arm. He can’t remember exactly when Ethan’s well-being became so important to Benji, when his every injury became a reason to fret and panic and his suicidal stunts became more heart-stopping than amusing or impressive. Occasionally, he catches Ethan staring at him with some inscrutable expression, but he tries his best not to read into it too much. Ethan is, in many ways, an enigma to him, and Benji has long since given up trying to understand his motives for doing many things, let alone for a single, specific look.

As is certainly stated somewhere in the official IMF handbook, an agent should always have his mind on the mission. Benji supposes his conscious decision to think about something else makes him a terrible agent, but, then again, there are certainly other attributes about him other than a wandering mind that make him less than fit for field duty (in his opinion). And so, for only a few minutes, as he drives below that breathtaking sunset, he allows his mind to wander.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the team has been almost entirely reunited! While it's an exciting prospect, it is admittedly much more difficult to keep track of five people as opposed to two, but it also opens up opportunities to have more complex operations.


End file.
